


Tuesday's Gone

by Dr_Supernova_Dragon_Cat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: 70s AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual Fluff, Explicit Language, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prison AU, Smut, Suspense, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Violence, Well-earned happiness, don't copy to other site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:53:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 178,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25001944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Supernova_Dragon_Cat/pseuds/Dr_Supernova_Dragon_Cat
Summary: **COMPLETE**Prison AU set in 1977, Texas. Gripping, sexy, suspenseful. Sepia-toned Stephen King-style eeriness meets sultry, smutty SanSan shaded in depth.When Sansa’s glittering dreams turned to a nightmare, she flees back to her hometown in Texas to pick up the pieces and agrees to take part in a prison pen pal program. She writes to an inmate she knows nothing about, Vietnam War veteran Sandor Clegane.Through their letters, mutual intrigue blossoms into tantalizing attraction, but a series of oddities and a string of murders grip the Texas plains, shattering Sansa’s illusion of peace.As Sandor faces the prospect of freedom, he and Sansa find themselves embroiled in a darkness they didn’t anticipate and high stakes that threaten their future. Through it all, they forge an unbreakable bond. Now if only they can survive the storm that’s coming…
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 1565
Kudos: 663





	1. Bad Company

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maroucia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maroucia/gifts), [shadesofpemberley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesofpemberley/gifts).



> Big shout out to Maroucia for the prison AU prompt! I hope I do it some justice because you certainly provided a lot of inspiration. This fic is dedicated to Maroucia and ShadesOfPemberly. You girls are amazing and so dear to me. Big love to you both! This is for you two! <3 
> 
> I hope you enjoy and please don’t be shy to leave some love! 
> 
> Feel free to follow me on tumblr at supernovadragoncat.tumblr.com!
> 
> [ Check out the Tuesday's Gone playlist on Spotify!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3LI17rqYmJMQTO5MonbJvp?si=4qbYFC5WQeaV99GwN5jfvw)

**July 1976—Kansas City, Missouri**

_“Come home, baby. Just come home.”_

Fireworks exploded outside where a crowd had gathered at the riverfront. With each pop, Sansa’s heart beat wildly in her chest. A sound echoed in the hall outside her apartment door. In the foyer, she froze. _He’s here. He’s coming._

Her eyes darted to the kitchen. She crept there in slow movements to arm herself with anything she could find—a knife; that gold-plated pepper grinder; those heavy serving platters he insisted on for all their lavish soirees. Her frantic gaze snapped back to the front door, and she waited for the handle to jostle, the jangle of his keys, the anger in his voice.

Whoever was in the hall moved along, but the exquisitely carved clock in the living room chimed the time. Ten. Every toll resounded in reminder. _He’s coming._

Sick to her stomach, Sansa sprinted down the hall with horror in every step. In the bedroom, she slammed the door shut and locked it and, if it weren’t for dwindling time, she might’ve hoisted whatever she could in front of the door.

She dashed into the closet and reached for her heavy leather bag from the shelf. Sansa hadn’t used it in years, but it was one of the last relics of the small-town girl she used to be. She landed in Kansas City with the scuffed up leather bag; a Texas beauty Queen with a heart full of dreams and head in the clouds. What a fool she’d been.

Sansa pulled the leather bag from the shelf and with it came a downpour of expensive purses that landed at her feet. It didn’t matter. She crashed to her knees on the closet floor. She shoved fistfuls of clothes into the bag with trembling hands. Everything would be ruined and wrinkled, and she couldn’t care less. It didn’t matter. She’d leave all the fine things she owned behind—dazzling jewels, extravagant shoes, anything and everything she could’ve ever hoped for in the material. It didn’t matter.

Sansa wrangled the only sensible shoes she owned into the bag and something about being on the closet floor with mascara staining her cheeks and an ache in her chest felt like repeating the past.

“He cheated on me, momma,” she’d cried around Christmas time into the phone. The cord had stretched into the walk-in closet and Sansa had huddled amongst the glittering gowns and pageant crowns. Big city life had rendered her into a sad, sobbing shell on the floor. “He’s got an apartment with another woman.” On Joffrey’s arm, Sansa had seen that woman—butter blonde hair and the greenest eyes she’d ever seen.

“Come home, baby. Just come home,” her mother had cried right along with her into the phone. She said it once more a week before her death, but Sansa hadn’t made it in time. By her best estimate, she’d crossed the Oklahoma line into Texas right around the moment her mother took her last breath.

Sansa swiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand and eyed her beautiful dresses one last time. _Leave it behind._

The sparkling evening gowns hung like pristine memories of what should’ve been the sweet summer of her youth; all the parties and the prestige of the life she should’ve had. Everyone back home said Sansa Stark was destined for the gold-dust glamor of the big city. And here she was—lucky to be alive, but first she’d have to survive the night.

_He’ll be here soon._

With the bag in tow, Sansa sprung to her feet and flung open the closet door that led to the bathroom. Clumsy hands rifled through the top drawer. _Just get out,_ the voice screamed in her head. Each ragged breath wheezed from dry lips as she threw ragtag items into the bag. It didn’t matter what was hers or his; she tossed it in and the rest she’d figure out later. Bottles of perfume, makeup, a toothbrush, Tylenol. She could replace anything that was missing. _Just get out. Go._

Sansa threw the tattered leather bag over her shoulder, flipped up the toilet seat, and slid the engagement ring off her finger in the final act of shedding this life. _All that glitters…_

She dropped the enormous diamond into the toilet and flushed, watching with grim satisfaction as the water swallowed it down. That diamond deserved to end up in shit. The corner of Sansa’s mouth lifted in a smile for what little justice she could claim for herself. She’d take it. He’d made her life a living hell.

Beyond the bathroom and down the hall, the front door exploded open, slamming into the adjacent wall so hard it shook the studs. Sansa’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a yelp, and she pressed herself against the bathroom wall.

“Sansa!” Joffrey screamed and bounded down the hall.

Her legs trembled fierce enough that she knew she’d toppled over if she moved. _Stay still._

Tears of defeat welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She eyed the other bathroom door; the one leading to the hall and her only way out because Joffrey’s foot now smashed into the bedroom door. With each hit, Sansa flinched but edged closer to her escape. _You have to try._

Her stomach flipped and mouth filled with saliva. With a shaking hand, she reached for the knob. The timing meant everything. Into the hall too soon or too late meant he’d be on top of her before she knew it.

“I’m going to fucking kill you!” he howled like a feral animal and with rage burning through him.

The bedroom door busted open as the wood ruptured beneath the sheer force of his kicks. She could see him now—red-face drunk, incensed that she’d stood him up for America’s Bicentennial Jubilee and the fete held in honor of Lannister Petroleum.

Joffrey screamed again, more unintelligible threats, and Sansa counted down the seconds. This was it. Time slipped away. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling and mouthed a silent prayer as he careened into the bedroom. Pounding step after pounding step, he hurtled himself into the closet.

_Now._

Sansa flung open the door and darted into the hall. Priceless pieces of art that adorned the walls whipped by in a haze. She sprinted through the living room, but his irate footsteps collided against the floor behind her.

He was closer, gaining on her though her legs burned, and blood pumped hard through her veins. Purse. She needed her purse. Sansa spun on her heel and snatched her bag from the sofa table just as Joffrey reached her.

A tremendous force wrenched her backwards as his fingers coiled around the leather bag’s strap. Sansa’s knees buckled, but she remained on her feet. She jolted hard to the right and then to the left, forceful enough that he let go.

As she hurled herself around, one balled fist landed hard and with a crack at the center of his face. Joffrey’s nose gushed blood and, in the moment it took him to lift a hand to his face and stare in bewilderment at the blood staining his fingertips, Sansa bolted out the front door and ran down the hallway of their high rise.

When she reached the end of the hall, Sansa jabbed the elevator button with panicked insistence. Joffrey raced after her. His eyes had gone black with rage and his face was a bloody ruin. The elevator door opened, and Sansa tumbled inside. She whimpered as she pressed the button for the doors to close again, jamming her thumb against it with all her might.

Closer, he was burning through the distance between them. The doors closed in an agonizing crawl as he neared enough to reach.

He didn’t scream. He knew better. _“Don’t make a scene, Sansa,”_ he liked to taunt, usually as he crushed her hand in vise-like grip, daring her to react in front of others. Joffrey was a Lannister, a monster behind golden smiles and a carefully crafted reputation, but she saw the manic fury that contorted his face now, the monster unmasked.

Sansa pressed herself against the back of the elevator and squeezed her eyes shut. It was too late. He’d caught her. Any moment he’d intervene because, if there was one thing she’d learned about him, it was that he always got his way.

The collision never came, though. Just a resounding thud as Joffrey slammed into the elevator doors already shut. With quivering hands, Sansa fumbled in her purse past tubes of lipstick and her wallet and dug out her keys. She eyed the elevator’s numbers lighting up with each passing floor.

“Come on. Faster. Go,” she pled between the seventh and sixth floor. With each panting breath, she paced the elevator.

Five.

Surely, he’d be flying down the stairwell. He wouldn’t quit. He’d never quit.

Four.

How many flights was it? Twelve. Sansa’s limbs went numb. She hovered in front of the doors. She’d have to make the most of the time she had to get to her car. She’d parked it close to the elevator for good reason and the reason was this. By the grace of a cruel God perhaps, he always got his way. Always.

Three.

What if he was there already? What if he’d made it? Everything always worked in his favor. Inexplicably. Always. And never in hers. _God give me this,_ she prayed to the mirrored ceiling of the elevator.

Two.

Sansa gripped the keys. They dug into her palm that was slick with sweat. Her heart slammed in her chest, a resounding and sickening beat.

One.

_This is it._ Run, she’d have to run. It didn’t matter if he was there. Sansa gulped down a panicked breath. The elevator slowed as it rumbled towards the garage level. The doors slid open.

Now.

Sansa shouldered through the sliver of space between the doors and sprinted to her car, feet pounding against the pavement. Her trembling hands fumbled with the keys and her eyes snapped to the stairwell. This was her moment, her chance, the only one she’d get.

Sansa ripped open the car door and hurled her bags inside. She collapsed into the seat and yanked the door shut. When the engine fired up, Sansa peeled out of the garage and sped onto the city street beyond.

A horn blared as she cut across the intersection and raced down the hill towards the riverfront. Red, white, and blue lit up the sky with dazzling splendor and a boisterous crowd gathered along the streets, all waving the flag with eyes peeled to the black heavens and unaware of the horror from which she’d narrowly escaped.

Sansa adjusted her rearview mirror and spared one last glance to the high rise she’d called home for the past few years. She navigated onto the highway west bound towards Wichita and across the empty plains leading back to where she belonged.

_“Come home, baby. Just come home.”_

* * *

**May 1977—Devil Creek, Texas**

“Another?” Sansa asked with a smile and let the coffee carafe hover over the stranger’s half-empty mug. His mustache—jet black except an off-center patch of gray—twitched as he thought it over but ultimately shook his head and slid two dollars across the laminate counter.

He stood from the stool and, before pushing through the door, tipped his hat to her in polite departure. Sansa observed him through the window and cleared away the mug and plate emptied of a tuna melt. How the hell a stranger ended up here, she hadn’t the foggiest.

Devil Creek sat smack dab between Abilene and Lubbock, not quite lost to time but still just a dusty little town off the state road, not visible enough to even get lost in. People who came did so for a reason, and the ones who were born here rarely ventured far.

The afternoon sun drenched the high plains and spilled through the diner’s windows to bathe her in its warmth. Perched at the end of the counter, Sansa sipped on cold lemonade and twirled the ends of her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Outside, the clouds ambled by and left shadows that rolled lazily across dry earth. In her past life, she’d taken big sky and cotton clouds for granted. _Never again._

“You gonna help me with this or daydream out that window?” Jeyne broke in with bubbling laughter as she carried a tray of empty salt shakers.

“How about both?” Sansa circled around the counter and eased into an empty booth next to the far window. Jeyne settled across from her and removed the shaker’s lids one by one, but her gaze drifted to Sansa and lingered a little too long to be all that innocent.

“What?” Sansa asked and carefully poured salt into each shaker, mindful not to spill. She wasn’t raised on superstitions but believed it best not to tempt fate.

“I have something.” Jeyne abandoned the salt shakers and pulled out an envelope hidden beneath the tray.

“What’s that?” Sansa probed.

The girl responded with a sly smile, her big brown eyes alight with something that made Sansa’s stomach flip. She’d known Jeyne since they were girls playing in the schoolyard in their gingham and lace dresses while Arya chased them around with worms dangling from a stick.

Sansa returned the salt container to the table and settled back in her seat with her arms folded over her chest. This wasn’t about the salt. “Jeyne, what is it?”

A conspiratorial smile creased Jeyne’s lips once more, and she leaned forward but lowered her voice despite the radio lilting from the kitchen. The cook whistled along with the tune, blithely unaware or uninterested in whatever secret Jeyne was about to share.

“Remember that prisoner pen pal program?”

Sansa nodded. Jeyne used to come into the diner sometimes with an inexplicable airiness and an unusual pep in her step. It’d taken weeks to pry it out of her. The girl had been writing to a prisoner and claimed it opened up a fresh perspective on life.

Sansa pegged it as the beginnings of falling in love, but she’d gotten it all wrong. It was a service to the community, a way to heal, or so Jeyne said, and the last bit got Sansa’s attention. If she was in bad need of anything, it was healing. She gave it a go, submitting her information to Jeyne’s church that liaised with the program, and swiftly forgot about it until now.

“You got your match.” Jeyne lit up like a lightbulb and handed off the thin envelope that she had already opened.

Sansa took it and felt one brow lift as she contemplated Jeyne across the booth. “My match?”

The term rang odd and disingenuously implied a chosen one. In reality, they’d probably plucked Sansa’s name from a bucket to pair with an inmate also selected at random. This wasn’t kismet.

“That’s what they call it,” Jeyne explained the terminology with a shrug. “I haven’t looked yet. I wanted us to find out together.”

Sansa held up the torn-into envelope with a smirk. Jeyne hadn’t exactly covered her tracks.

“Okay, maybe I peeked,” she conceded. “All I know is his name is Sandor Clegane.”

Clegane. The last name was unusual enough that she’d remember ever running into that lineage. The pageant queens of small-town Texas chased after the bloodlines of big oil, the might and wealth promising a way out of dead end towns. Sansa already made that mistake. It wouldn’t happen again.

“He’s a war vet.” Jeyne replaced the lid to a salt shaker, but gazed out the window. An enormous cloud rolled over and cover the vacant parking lot in its shadow.

“Aren’t they all?” Sansa mused, but it came out wrong and she bit her tongue. Some people painted those who fought in the war as criminals, the slaughter just as much their cross to bear as President Johnson who sent the boys over to Vietnam in droves.

Sansa wasn’t one of those people. She knew the pain of the draft well. Robb and Jon’s draft cards came and cast a somber shroud over their family that left her mother crying one too many times at the kitchen table.

“What’s he in for? Murder?” Sansa asked and stared at the envelope in her hands. She’d had her fill of monsters and couldn’t quite stomach the thought of corresponding with a man who brutalized women, in particular.

“I don’t know,” Jeyne replied. “They don’t tell you.”

“What does he look like?” Intrigue gnawed at her and Sansa ran one finger across the envelope’s tattered flap that sheltered a mystery.

“Does it matter?” Laughter rippled through Jeyne’s question. “It’s not like you’ll ever meet him.”

Sansa lifted her eyes to the girl. “Why shouldn’t I? If he’ll be my pen pal…”

Jeyne’s hands dropped to the table, and her mouth hung agape. “You wouldn’t actually meet him!”

Was it a question? No, not quite. The look Jeyne cut was a dubious warning, but curiosity danced right behind it.

“I just want to know who I’m writing to,” Sansa explained to head off the strange affront at the idea that she might ever sit face-to-face with Sandor Clegane. Sansa flipped open the envelope. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? You get to know them? That might lead to a meeting.”

Jeyne had never met her prisoner. Going on six months’ worth of letters now, the possibility never even came up in discussion either.

“Go on!” Jeyne motioned to the envelope with waning patience despite a bright, white-toothed smile. “I’ve been waiting all day for this.”

Sansa pulled out a single note card and skimmed the description with its sparse details, hardly a description at all.

Sandor Clegane. Prisoner 131906.

Age: 35

Hometown: San Antonio, TX

Military Service: 1967-1970

Incarceration Year: 1972

Marital Status: Single

Appearance: Caucasian. Black hair. Gray eyes.

Religion: None

Sansa flipped the card over. Empty. She pried the envelope wide open. Nothing.

“Well, they don’t give you much,” Sansa commented and turned the card over again as if that might manifest more of this man. “Yours had a picture and more of a description.”

Jeyne’s prisoner looked like a kindly old man, but he’d killed his wife amid a lovers’ quarrel and specifically noted in his first letter to Jeyne that he’d found Jesus behind bars. He was looking for a prayer partner, someone to share in the good Lord’s word.

He’d hit the jackpot with Jeyne. She was a Jesus girl, a prayer never far from her lips. Everything she did, she prayed. When Sansa dropped a dish to the floor, Jeyne prayed. Storms rolled across the tall grass with a sky gone black, Jeyne prayed. Like a good Christian girl, Jeyne prayed for everyone she knew and even those she didn’t.

Sansa tucked the description card back into the envelope. _Sandor Clegane._

“What if he’s the Son of Sam?” she quipped with a nervous laugh to match the flutter in her belly. She joked, but girls went missing all over the country with crazed killers on the loose. Across the plains of West Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, girls ended up dead in the cornfields.

Jeyne rolled her eyes. “He’s not the Son of Sam. You said you wanted someone who’s never received a letter.” The girl pointed to the envelope. “This is him.”

A forgotten one was how Sansa put it. If she would do this, she wanted a lost soul, the one put away and left behind, nothing and no one to call their own, no future or family to count on. Apparently, her forgotten one was Sandor Clegane.

Behind the counter, the phone rang, and Sansa slid from the booth. “I’ll get it. You stay here.”

Along the way, she grabbed up the envelope in an odd afterthought and carried it with her.

Sansa snatched up the receiver and pressed it to her ear. “Poole’s Diner.”

The faint buzz of an empty line drifted through and Sansa almost hung up, but a soft breath stilled her movements. A chill shot up her spine. She gripped the phone with both trembling hands and spun away lest Jeyne hear.

“Who is this?” she whispered and cupped the sides of the receiver to listen. Sansa waited. One more breath puffed through the line before it went dead.

She hung up the phone and clutched the envelope to her chest that rose and fell in an erratic rhythm.

“Who was that?” Jeyne hollered from the booth and finished up the last of the salt shakers.

Sansa swallowed hard. She didn’t know. She never knew who it was. The calls started in early spring and always the same way—no words, just an exhaled breath. The few people she’d mentioned it to in passing assured it was just an accident or a prank call. Why then did it follow her to work and then back home, always knowing where she was? That hardly seemed a coincidence.

The diner’s bell rang to announce a customer and Sansa jumped with a startle, on edge and still reeling as she turned around with a smile. Along the way, she spotted the clock barreling towards the end of her shift, just an hour left.

Old man Miller shuffled in and his tongue peeked out the side of his mouth with the concerted effort it took to scoot his walker across the floor. With his pants hung high on his hips, the old man still proudly wore his large belt buckle. Every Thursday, like clockwork, he wandered in to drink coffee and regale Sansa and Jeyne about the good old days.

Long ago, when Sansa’s father was a young man, Mr. Miller hired him as a ranch hand. The old man must’ve seen the hole in Sansa’s heart and tried to fill it up with stories of her father. She had so few of those, her fifteen years with him just weren’t enough. 

“Look at you!” Sansa beamed. “That a new hat?” She met him halfway from the door to the counter and motioned to the Stetson sitting on his head.

“I wore it for you,” he declared on the tail end of a laugh as Sansa escorted him to a stool. “You look like your momma, Ms. Sansa.”

Mr. Miller gripped her forearm as Sansa helped him into his seat and she tossed him a smile just like she always did every Thursday when he paid her this same compliment. Sometimes it was the way she wore her hair in long auburn waves, darker now that she was older. Other times it was the blue of her eyes or the way she smiled. He meant well, but the comparison to her mother stung and Sansa had only recently managed to talk about her without going misty-eyed.

“Thank you,” she replied sweetly and leaned against the counter across from him, only now aware of the envelope still tucked in her hand. She discreetly slipped it into her purse. “How did the sweet peppers come in?”

He squinted at Sansa, and his unruly brows pulled together, deepening the crease between them. “The what now?” 

“Your garden,” Sansa called over her shoulder when she turned her back to him to pour his coffee. “You said last week the rabbits are going to town. They even got into your sweet peppers.”

“Well, shit, I probably shot them then. I can’t quite remember.”

Mr. Miller’s raucous laughter dissolved into a fit of coughing. He pulled a handkerchief from his front shirt pocket and swiveled in his stool. He waved the cloth towards the empty road outside the diner.

“I saw someone new come into town. He went barreling by like a demon straight out of hell. I guess he figured he belonged in a place named after the Devil.”

Sansa set the mug in front of Mr. Miller and followed his gaze to the road. Unease crept in at the corners, but Sansa blotted it out with another smile when Mr. Miller turned to her again. She veered the subject away from the stranger and buried the phone call in the pit of her stomach where she kept the rest of her fears. _Just a prank call. Just a stranger._

Sansa wiped down the counter as she listened to Mr. Miller’s stories, but her eyes drifted here and there to the envelope poking out of her purse. At some point, Jeyne retreated from the kitchen at the end of Mr. Miller’s tale. A devious smile spread about her lips as she shifted a glance between Sansa and Mr. Miller.

“You know, Sansa’s gonna write to a prisoner, just like me,” Jeyne announced and bit her bottom lip that still curled with delight. “He’s a war vet.”

Mr. Miller gnawed on the information and stared at Sansa as he stroked his chin.

“If you need a war vet to write letters to, you can write them to me!” he chuckled and might’ve descended into another story about his glory in the Great War but stopped himself short. 

“But I see you every Thursday,” Sansa reminded him. “If we wrote letters, we wouldn’t have much to talk about here, now would we?”

“I guess.” Mr. Miller lifted the mug to his lips and downed the likely tepid coffee with one hard gulp. “I better be off. I’m busier than a jackrabbit in springtime these days.”

“I have something for you!” Sansa dashed to the end of the counter and retrieved a small plastic bag from underneath. She handed it off to Mr. Miller, careful not to overload him with the weight of it.

“I’m giving you an extra jar of mint jam this week. You seem to like it.”

Like it was an understatement. Sansa swore the man ate nothing but butter and jam toast at the rate he tore through the jars week after week.

Mr. Miller took the bag and gave her one last doting smile. “Sweet peppers couldn’t hold a candle to you, darling. Sugar and spice, and you know the rest.”

Sansa nodded with a soft laugh. “You take care now.” She waved and rested against the wall behind the counter.

“If I see those rabbits again, I’m gonna skin them alive,” Mr. Miller hollered on his way to the door that Jeyne held open for him. “That man you’re talking to, Sansa, better not be a scoundrel or I’ll do the same to him. Makes no difference to me!”

The wind swallowed up his last words. The clouds had darkened and raced by at a faster clip, swept along with a steady breeze that whipped up dust.

Sansa reached around to the small of her back and untied the apron at her waist. She folded it into pristine squares that she smoothed out and set beneath the counter. Jeyne yanked the diner door shut against the force of the wind.

“A storm’s on its way.” Sansa tipped her head to a blackening sky where distant lightning rippled across. “I better be on my way before it comes.”

“Oh!” Jeyne’s eyes widened, and she bolted behind the counter. “Before you go, I borrowed my momma’s Polaroid camera so I can take your picture. You can send it along with your letter to Mr. Sandor Clegane.”

Jeyne carefully pulled out a black soft-sided case and gingerly unpacked the camera.

Sansa stared down at the striped terry-cloth t-shirt she wore tucked into denim shorts. “Jeyne, if I’d known, I would have—”

“You’d what?” The girl stared at Sansa from beneath her lashes and fiddled with the camera. “Slip into one of those old pageant dresses hanging up in your closet?”

_I should get rid of those._ Sansa went around in circles with herself on the matter. Those gowns reminded her of her mother, who stayed up late some nights to meticulously tailor them. Then again, she wasn’t that girl anymore and never would be again.

“Alright,” Jeyne sighed and surveyed the light of the diner, dimmer now as dark clouds crowded the sky. “Stand over there and maybe take down your hair.”

Sansa followed Jeyne’s pointed finger to an empty wall and pulled her ponytail free from the hair tie. She ran her fingers through her hair’s cascading length, mid-waist by now and left in soft waves, having recovered from the years she’d spent straightening it all because it was what Joffrey preferred. She counted it as a lesson and recovered what she could of her life and of her hair. Against the wall, Sansa stood with her shoulders squared and hands tucked behind her back.

Jeyne squinted as she pressed the viewfinder to her eye. “Smile!” she said but yanked the camera away from her face. “No, an actual smile. And try to look less stiff.”

“I am smiling!” Sansa protested with a laugh that sent her arms to her sides and relaxed her shoulders.

Jeyne quickly snapped the picture and retrieved the film from the camera. Sansa watched the picture develop from a murky gray, certain her eyes would be closed, or her face contorted in some horrid expression.

The picture that developed showed Sansa laughing, a candid and unstaged moment. She didn’t look like a pageant queen. Instead, she looked happy.

“There.” Jeyne handed the Polaroid to Sansa with a pointed look already halfway to disappointment. “Are you gonna do it? Actually, do it?”

Sansa took the picture and, when she retrieved her purse, slid it into the envelope with the details of Sandor Clegane still a mystery to her. She toiled over a question she should’ve already known the answer to. What was the point of talking big about forgotten souls if she didn’t plan on following through?

She settled her purse on her shoulder and gripped the straps. Thunder boomed outside and the diner’s windows rattled in response. “We’ll see,” she murmured.

Jeyne’s lips sunk in a frown and she pushed back glossy brown curls behind her ears. “It starts with forgiveness, Sansa.”

“What?”

“Forgiveness,” she repeated, but Sansa had heard just fine. What she needed was an explanation. Jeyne stared at her hands pressed to the counter. “Part of their rehabilitation is forgiveness; knowing that society forgives them and maybe then they can forgive themselves.”

“What if we don’t forgive them?”

“You should.” Jeyne lifted her eyes with a serene smile. Outside, the wind howled.

The shift from the Royal We to Sansa singular wasn’t lost on her. This wasn’t about forgiving Mr. Sandor Clegane, the war vet who’d committed a crime egregious enough that he’d already served five years behind bars. And it wasn’t really about the greater whole of society forgiving men like him. Monsters roamed the earth, free to terrorize innocents, and no one spoke much about their benediction.

This was about her and all the ways Sansa had been searching for the path to forgive herself—forgiveness for leaving home to chase dreams too big with a man who was all wrong and forgiveness for coming back one night too late to send her momma off with the angels.

“Go on now,” Jeyne urged. “Before the skies open up.”

Open up, they did and just as Sansa pulled her car into the driveway of her childhood home. She didn’t bother with the garage because it was more trouble than it was worth but gripped her purse tight to her side and ran for the front door. Even in the short distance, Sansa trudged inside with her shirt soaked. She tossed her purse to the couch near the front door. Down the hall and into the bedroom that used to be Robb’s, she peeled out of her rain-soaked work clothes and into a plain t-shirt and jeans.

Sansa didn’t have the heart to take over the master bedroom. She kept it sealed shut and used it mostly for storage. She’d made the house her own bit by bit, but it still felt like living in the shadow of her past. Over the last year, she sorted through her mother’s belongings and cleared out the closet. Her father’s possessions were fewer and farther between and already culled through years ago. Robb’s were even less.

Still, the ghosts of her family remained—photographs that lined the hall to the bedrooms, her mother’s wedding china packed up and dominating an entire corner of the basement, Robb’s military regalia. Every time she turned a corner, something was there to remind her of all she’d lost.

With the radio as her companion in the kitchen, Sansa prepared a meager dinner, a meal for one as it usually was, except for the nights Jeyne came over to keep her company. Sometimes a neighbor would demand that she stay for supper. More often than not, Sansa sat down at the dinner table just like now, alone with her thoughts or the TV humming in the background.

_I’d rather be alone than with that monster._

That thought alone usually killed the pity party. And what about all those other parties? The gleaming riot of greed, gluttonous in food and drink and sex. She’d been out of her depth, entirely lost, an outsider planted at the center of it all.

_I like this better._

Sansa didn’t bother with the TV or radio tonight. In the fluorescent glow of the kitchen, she sat at the table with her back against the wood-paneled wall and listened to the storm outside. Rain pounded the windows, and the lights flickered. In the silence, she cleaned up the kitchen and washed dishes as she gazed at the storm through the window.

Outside, a bird, larger than the robins and blue jays she usually saw, struggled against the wind. It flapped with enviable determination towards the tree in the far corner of the backyard. When it finally managed the task and landed on a branch rocking in the wind, Sansa saw it wasn’t just any bird but an owl that gazed back at her with big yellow eyes.

By the time she finished the dishes, the owl had flown off somewhere else to shelter in the storm that blew past just as quickly as it had arrived. Sansa opened the kitchen window and invited in the cool breeze that danced on the lace curtains.

She retired to the living room, but her eyes wandered to her purse still on the couch. The envelope poked out of the top and she ignored it through the better part of the evening news, but long after the sunset and the beckoning became too much, Sansa pulled it free and ran her fingertips along the flap.

_Sandor Clegane._

She read his description again, but gained no further insights hidden between the lines. In the vacant spaces, she envisioned what he might look like. Black hair and gray eyes. A man of war.

In the kitchen, Sansa retrieved a fountain pen and her mother’s stationery set from a drawer and settled at the table. What was she supposed to say to him, a complete stranger? Jeyne wrote about many things—big and small—in her letters. Sansa knew nothing about this man or what he’d be interested in hearing from her.

_“Dear Sandor,”_ she wrote, but stopped. The pen’s tip pressed against the page and bled out ink in a growing pool.

_Too familiar. You don’t know him._ She crumpled the page and tossed it in the trash, but just as she was about to pen _“Dear Sir”_ Sansa stopped herself once more. Her mother’s stationery was finite. _Make it count._

He was a forgotten one, Sandor Clegane, and that meant making this worth the effort, for him and for her. Sansa started again and let the pen flow across the page with no barrier between her thoughts and the nib.

_Dear Sandor,_

_I’ve never done anything like this before, so please pardon any gracelessness on my part. I’m not sure where to start so I’ll tell you a bit about myself and I suppose we can go from there._

_My name is Sansa Stark. I’m twenty-five and, like you, was born and raised in Texas, although I spent a few years in Kansas City. My daddy was a rancher and died too young. I was fifteen at the time. I helped my momma with my younger siblings—two brothers and a sister. My older brothers were both drafted. One made it back, the other didn’t._

_I read that you’re a veteran. I hope the years since the war have been kind to you but, recognizing your situation, I can’t imagine they’ve been all that sweet. I hope there’s been light somewhere._

_My momma passed this time last year. Sometimes I still don’t believe it’s been this long. The days seem long, the weeks short, and I’m left drifting in between. I came back home after my mother died to go through her things and to sell the house. Even with my siblings here, that task was harder than I ever could have imagined._

_So here I am—back in my town, living in my childhood home, though it’s just me these days. My siblings are off conquering the world! I didn’t imagine I’d stay this long. The time slipped away, and I guess I’m still trying to sift through what’s left behind—inside and out._

_I work down at the local diner. My best friend’s family owns it and they’ve been kind enough to hire me. I garden and cook. I like to bake too and share with my neighbors. I sing at the local bar on Saturday nights. I even write my own songs and wanted to be a famous singer like Stevie Nicks. She’s my favorite. Maybe someday, but for now I’m happy and enjoy my life for all its simplicities._

_I’ve rambled on enough about myself for one letter. Please tell me more about you, anything and everything you’d like to share—who you are, where you’re from, the things that bring you happiness, your dreams._

_If nothing else, I hope this letter brings you some measure of comfort, even if it’s from a stranger, and you’ll know that someone in the world is thinking of you. You’re not forgotten._

_Before I go, I’ve included a picture of myself, so you’ll know what I look like._

_Take care,_

_Sansa Stark_

Apparently, making it count meant bleeding herself dry on the page and Sansa read through her words whose candid revelation paled in comparison to a mere “Dear Sandor”. She didn’t know this man, but the letter meant he’d know her; her own parts forgotten. If he couldn’t appreciate the content, maybe he could at least appreciate the sincerity.

Once the ink dried, Sansa folded the letter into thirds and stuffed it, along with the Polaroid, into a crisp new envelope that she sealed, stamped, and addressed. On her way to bed, she placed the letter in her purse with every intention of leaving those words sealed shut in the envelope.

That task was hard won, though. Sansa tossed and turned with the words she’d written. They were too much and why should he care about any of it. She flipped to her back and stared at the popcorn ceiling. Really, she had revealed little. Her past was a completed tapestry and Sansa had only described the pattern.

When sleep finally prevailed, it came dreamless and Sansa woke the next morning before her alarm. Dreamless her sleep might’ve been. Restful it was not. She dragged herself to the shower and bumbled through her routine of drying her hair and applying her makeup. The usual grace wasn’t there and, out the door for her shift, Sansa snatched up her purse.

Halfway to her car, she stopped dead in her tracks. _The letter._

She contemplated the mailbox at the end of the driveway. The urge to rewrite the thing buoyed up from within, afloat on nerves and hesitation and something she couldn’t pinpoint. _It’s just a letter._

The self-consolation wasn’t enough to inspire a trip to the mailbox, so she climbed into her car and tossed her purse to the passenger seat. When she fired up the engine, Sansa let it run idle.

A minute passed.

And then another.

A whole Rolling Stones song played on the radio and Sansa sat with the letter heavy in her possession.

_It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to him. I wrote it for him._

Sansa plucked the envelope from her purse and studied the delicate border of English roses printed on thick linen paper. She set it in her lap and backed out of the driveway. Sansa eased the car next to the mailbox where she placed the letter inside and flipped up the flag.

“Alright, Sandor Clegane, let’s see where this takes us,” Sansa mumbled to herself before driving away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I am thrilled to bits to be back in fandom and writing again. 
> 
> I hadn’t planned to write a new fic, but here we are! I’m really excited about this one and have had so much fun writing it! This fic is about 80% complete (I didn’t want to start posting until it was almost done) and sitting at 125K words right now, so I will plan to update it once a week on Tuesdays
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, and I’ll see you in a week for chapter two! Much love to you all!


	2. Fortunate Son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Some depictions of violence and PTSD.

**October 1972—Cactus, Texas**

The hair on Sandor’s neck stood on end and an icy shiver trickled down his spine. Behind the bar, Bronn hovered near him and clapped Sandor on the back. He winced at the contact. At some point, he’d stopped hitting the ceiling, but his skin still crawled.

“The fuck I tell you about doing that?” Sandor grumbled and peered at the man from beneath his black Stetson’s brim.

“Ah hell,” Bronn sighed and dropped his head. “I’m sorry.”

“No need. Just quit doing it,” Sandor chided with a smirk and popped the top off a Budweiser. He slid it to an old man at the end of the bar.

Bronn had offered Sandor a job here. He wasn’t in any position to complain or demand apologies. And he’d be damned if he would be a shell-shocked Nancy that sent others tiptoeing around his emotional tripwires, those invisible lines that set him off. Sandor came home from war knowing that those lines—crisscrossed like a mess of yarn—existed in him but didn’t know the first thing about how to untangle them.

The dingy bar was a shithole on the best of days, but well-positioned off the main drag, the only watering hole on this side of the railroad tracks that bisected the dusty town. The Union-Pacific rolled by two times a day and sometimes stopped altogether.

Bronn’s genius wasn’t the aesthetic of neon beer lights and a couple thrift store pool tables, but rather preying on the impatient. The flow of traffic meant that the steelworkers had to rumble by but, when that train creaked along or stopped altogether, those men ambled in to sate their thirst and blow off steam. They stuck around for more than one beer and long after the train moved on.

Now and then, the same woman would wander in and perch at the end of the bar. She sipped on Southern Comfort, chain-smoked Virginia Slims, and scoped out a cowboy for the night.

Like clockwork, fights erupted the nights she came. Sandor’s height and the muscle he’d packed on in the war designated him as the one to handle the rowdy. All it took was stepping out from behind the bar with his boots stomping against the scuffed-up floor. The unruly scattered, at least enough to settle their differences outside his best friend’s place of business.

It was the least Sandor could do. He came back home with no prospects, just more years of drifting ahead of him. During the war, Bronn had kept up with Sandor’s house and car, his only possessions worth anything, and promised him a job when he returned. The pay was decent, and that was all Sandor could ask for these days.

He wiped down the bar with a damp rag, but the door flung open and a cacophony of boots shuffled in. The cadence of the footfalls said the three men came looking for trouble.

“Turn this shit off!” one of them hollered over Waylon Jennings warbling from the jukebox in the back corner.

Two others cackled with laughter, already drunk as they stumbled to the bar. The old man enjoying his beer in silence had sense enough to snatch up his bottle and disappear to one of the laminate-topped tables near the dart boards.

Sandor dropped his rag into a bucket of soapy water and stood at full height. He crossed his arms over his chest and settled against the mirrored wall of liquor behind him.

The three men eased onto bar stools and each found some way to draw attention to the pistols hanging from their hips. The cracked leather of their hats that peeled apart at the brim said these weren’t those uptight assholes who traveled here from the city for the novelty of a dive bar.

The middle man’s cheeks were ruddy and cracked with broken blood vessels. He chewed dip that’d blackened his bottom teeth and the wad sat in a bulge beneath his lip. He leveled dark eyes on Sandor’s folded arms and legs and must’ve seen some threat in Sandor’s height and the way he stared right back.

“Get me a beer.” The man’s brusque demand earned him a round of raucous laughter from the other two.

Sandor lowered his gaze and pushed himself from the wall. The Stetson hid his scars well enough to shut people up. Most assumed he got them in Vietnam. The peaceniks were the worst. They wanted a story to build up their anti-war soap box and stack the injustices to hoist themselves high enough that someone might listen. No one listened, and Sandor didn’t want to talk about it. These men weren’t here for stories, but Sandor kept his head down and scars hidden anyhow.

Beneath the bar, he plucked out a piss-water beer from the cooler and slammed the bottle in front of the shit-stain now gaping at him.

The man spit his dip on the floor. “What’s the matter with you, boy? Your momma not teach you any manners?”

Sandor lifted his head and pressed both hands to the edge of the bar. He leaned forward, poised to give this fucker a piece of his mind, but the man on the left flicked the brim of Sandor’s hat hard enough that it tumbled off his head.

The men gawked at Sandor’s scars, the patch of dark pink skin beginning at his forehead and extending beneath his chin.

“Christ almighty, you’re an ugly son-of-a-bitch!” one man hollered while the other two hooted with laughter. “Shit, if I had to serve with you, I’d’ve napalmed your ass too.”

Sandor’s blood rose with a quickened pulse. A familiar warmth spread down his arms and tingled in his fingertips that twitched for a trigger. He stepped back and almost crushed his prized hat on the floor. He sunk against the shelves again. The bottles rattled but sounded too metallic. _Victor Charlie two clicks away._

Sandor closed his eyes. _Not now._

The men laughed.

“Are you fucking stupid?” the middle man shouted and brown spittle dribbled from the corner of his mouth. “You one of those retards?”

Sandor didn’t answer. _Call in air support, Clegane. You deaf or stupid? Call it in._

“Probably. Look at his face!”

They pointed at him and laughed again, either at his scars or the way he’d undoubtedly gone ashen. Sweat slicked Sandor’s brow. The bar was hot, on fire, an impossible inferno.

“Zippo raids get the best of you? You were supposed to barbecue Charlie, not yourself, you fucking moron!”

The laughter faded on the edges and the screams came, along with flashes of images—tiny women running from huts and clutching their babies; butchered, all of them, and blood soaking the earth. The airplanes rumbled overhead. The heat hit his face now and Sandor dashed forward. He grabbed the piss-water beer bottle by the neck and smashed it to the edge of the bar.

“Leave!” he screamed, and his voice trembled in a terrible way. “I won’t tell you again.”

_Go. Go. Go._ The mortars fell with each command, exploding on impact. He never heard what else his commander screamed. He ran. Through thick overgrowth and plumes of smoke, he ran. He was dead. They were all dead.

Sandor gripped the bottle and the glass splintered beneath his vice-like grip. His heart raced and vision blurred. The smoke was too thick. It made him tear up.

“Look at him! He’s some kinda burnt up!” a voice shouted; someone who made it out. Sandor hurried forward as the shouting man came into focus with blackened teeth and broken blood vessels. That man pulled his gun from the holster as glass shattered around Sandor. It rained to the floor in glistening splinters and shards.

_Take cover!_

Sandor ducked with the last order his commander ever said, screaming like a loon for Sandor to get down, but a bullet had ripped through the man’s temple. His brain, bone, and blood had bathed Sandor’s uniform. He never could get those stains out.

Sandor bolted around the bar and the man raised his gun again, but Sandor slashed the beer bottle. It ripped through the air as easily as it ripped through the man’s skin. He cried out and collapsed to the floor.

_You wanna ride the freedom bird in a body bag, Clegane?_

A horrid scream echoed through the bar. Sandor straddled the man, and the bottle tore into his face again. And again. With each blow, blood oozed, and the iron scent filled Sandor’s nostrils. The screams weren’t from the man. It was Sandor hollering like a feral dog. The bottle slipped from his hand and sliced open his palm. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. _Survive. Get out of here alive._

The red rage came.

He’d seen it in others, but never knew it in himself—red in his eyes, red on his hands, red across the floor. The man no longer had a face; just a flap of flesh and an eye dangling from the socket. A sharp pain cracked through Sandor’s side and a violent force yanked him backwards.

He tumbled and fell and maybe closed his eyes because all that crimson faded to black, but the sounds remained—screams, curses, moans; more boots running through the door. A trio of flashing lights streamed through the window, probably Ranger Battalion coming in to drag him out. All three shone their lights through the jungle brush in dire need of beating down. _Turn your lights off. VC two clicks away,_ Sandor screamed in the darkness.

“Look at me, son.”

The deep voice pulled him from what seemed a dream. The black and red faded and it felt like coming out of a deep sleep. Sandor’s limbs loosened. His vision focused on the jukebox, a beacon in the back with bitter irony as Willie and Waylon cautioned _Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys._

His eyes shifted to Sheriff Clyde Griffin. He’d known the man since he was a boy, back before Griff’s thick mustache and hair had gone white. Only now, the man’s ashen pallor also looked two shades from death.

Sandor squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. On the floor, he sat propped up against the wall. Someone had wrapped a bar towel around his hand, but it was now soaked in blood. It looked like quite a lot until his eyes drifted to the red puddle a few feet from him that put it into perspective.

“Shit,” he grumbled.

His head lolled back and hit the wall. He stared up at a water-stained ceiling tile. Somewhere near the pool tables, Bronn shakily recited to Griff’s deputy whatever had happened here. Sandor remembered now the eyeball dangling from that shit bird’s head and the hollow cavern it left behind.

Sandor leveled his eyes at Griff crouched in front of him. “How bad is it?”

He meant the bar, all the liquor on the floor. The smell of booze was too overwhelming to mean anything other than a fine fucking mess and, while Sandor would have to clean it up, poor Bronn would eat the cost.

Griff didn’t mince words, even in the worst of times, but the man had a wicked sense of humor that Sandor wished he might spare in a moment like this.

“Bad. I’ll have to take you in, and we’ll see how the charges pan out.” Griff eased from his squatted position and pulled the handcuffs from his belt loop. “Better pray that man survives the night.” 

Sandor eyed Griff and pushed himself from the floor.

“Get my hat,” was all he had to say about that. Griff gathered his hands behind his back and secured the cuffs.

****

* * *

**May 1977—Wichita Falls, Texas**

The rain pelted in steady sheets of quarter-sized droplets. At least, it felt that way slick against the back of Sandor’s neck and ratta-tatting the barrack’s metal roof. The steam rose thick from sodden earth in a blanket of humidity. In the Suck, as he dotingly called it, keeping his shit dry was a full-time gig. With his socks sopping wet, Sandor dried his feet with an awful fear that jungle rot would take his legs. He stepped out of the barracks when someone hollered about the sun breaking through the clouds, the end of rainy season.

Like a solar-deprived fool, he bounded outside just in time to hear the familiar pin drop followed by a bounce and roll that only grenades made. Flash and bang, a piece of that tin roof would’ve sliced off the top of his head if it weren’t for his bare feet sinking into the mud. Charlie didn’t do it; didn’t have to.

“That boy ain’t right in the head,” his friends—most of whom were blown to bits in their own beds—said about the fucked up kid in their unit who kept to himself but had that crazy look in his eye.

Mud between his toes, Sandor screamed. His feet were wet. Jungle rot would set in and, if that didn’t take him, the enemies to the North and the ones inside his very unit would. He screamed because he figured he wasn’t coming home. He screamed because no one was left to care much that he wouldn’t.

His body jostled with a firm grip at his shoulder. Sandor cracked his eyes open. His cell mate—a one-eyed, arrogant son-of-a bitch named Beric—leaned over him.

“You’s screamin’ again,” the man grumbled. His strawberry blond hair grew in wild waves from his head.

Sandor shot up, and Beric took up his post across the cell and against the wall. The man’s jumpsuit was one size too big and swallowed up his gaunt frame. All the hunger strikes withered away his body until his sallow skin hung loose and his cheeks sunk beneath sharp bones.

“You would too,” Sandor said and sat with his forearms draped across his knees, but eyed Beric. Two years as cell mates, he still didn’t trust the man.

Those who knew Beric before claimed he never had the stink of religion on him like he did now. He drank and fucked and fought like any other red-blooded man, but the God-fear hadn’t gotten into him yet. Chasing after the worm, he drank to the bottom of a tequila bottle and damn near killed himself. The good doctors pumped his stomach and Beric claimed he puked up pure black—all the awful in him—and it put him back on the right path.

It didn’t stop the man from robbing banks and raising hell with his motorcycle club. He came to prison a man of God and proselytized to his heart’s content. That holy rolling righteousness attracted fists to his face, not disciples to the faith. Beric survived more prison fights than anyone else on the cell block. With each brush with death, he descended further into Gospel and claimed that he was a chosen one, even after an inmate from a rival gang scooped his eye out with a spoon.

A whistled church hymn came down the row of cells and Sandor sat up straight. He squared his shoulders and looked to the cage door just as Boros waddled up.

“What do you want?” Sandor grunted and glared at the man.

“You gotta visitor, Clegane.” Boros’s jowls jiggled when he talked, and the dull fluorescent lights reflected in the bald sheen of the man’s bulbous head.

Sandor stood and eased towards the cell door where he offered his wrists through a slat. He stared daggers at Boros as the man adjusted the cuffs tight enough that Sandor swore he was trying to sever his hands at the wrists. He bit his lip and refused to fuss because he knew Boros like the back of his hand.

Drunk on whatever power the man eked from his shit-paying job as a guard, Boros zeroed in on Sandor the moment he walked through the prison’s doors in shackles. Sandor’s greatest offense—his refusal to comply with buzz cuts because of religion. The only God Sandor claimed was the one who spared him the clippers and Boros was just smart enough to uncover the ruse, but there wasn’t shit he could do about it.

The door gave a metal groan as it opened, and Sandor slipped out.

“Get right with God and those demons won’t haunt you,” Beric hollered and held his bible to his chest. 

“Fuck you and fuck your God,” Sandor spat back with venom in his voice.

“You watch your mouth, boy!” Boros shoved Sandor forward. “I should whip you upside the head for taking the Lord’s name like that.”

“I’d like to see you try, you fat fuck,” Sandor chuckled as Boros wrenched him at the elbow. Sandor stared down at the man’s grubby fingers with a smirk. “Can’t reach my head with stubs for arms.”

Sandor towered over the man and laughed again at the image of Boros the Bloated swinging for his head and missing by a foot or more.

Only three people ever visited Sandor—his lawyer, Griff, and sometimes Bronn when he could manage the trip. Boros blazed past the phone room, which meant one thing. Griff was here.

The man favored contact visitation where he and Sandor could sit across the table from one another. Sandor swore the sheriff’s badge Griff still wore allowed him certain liberties, including the warden’s blind eye. Griff denied it, but a glint in his eye confirmed that he pulled strings where he could. A small-town sheriff, the man had big clout.

“You’ve got thirty minutes.” Boros unlocked the visitation room door, uncuffed Sandor, and shoved him inside. The door crashed behind him.

Griff stood and greeted Sandor with a firm handshake and a faint smile hidden beneath his thick mustache. Polite as ever, Griff had even removed his hat and placed it on the table. Short but stocky, he carried himself like a tall man might—pride lifting his shoulders and sending his steps colliding to the ground with heavy determination. Sandor liked to joke that big balls bowed Griff’s short legs.

“What did you do to shove a burr up his backside?” Griff motioned to the door where Boros hovered on the other side. In faded Levi’s and a shiny belt buckle prominently displayed, Griff resumed his seat at the table.

“I haven’t done shit.” Sandor sat with his arms crossed over his chest and back against the wall. A wry smile creased his lips.

Griff leveled a sharp look that he sanded down with gruff laughter. “I don’t buy that.” 

“You shouldn’t.” Sandor peered out the slit that passed for a window.

In the distance, the wind swept through a line of trees hard enough that even from here Sandor saw the canopies sway. “To what do I owe this pleasure, two visits in a month? I know it’s not because you miss me.”

“You’re damn straight it’s not,” Griff japed with a scowl on his lips, but the levity gleamed in his eyes. “I’ve got something for you.”

Griff lifted his hat from the table to reveal the tattered backside of an envelope. “A letter came,” the man announced, and something in stating the obvious irritated Sandor. 

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You some kind of magician now? Pulling shit outta your hat? Don’t fuck with me. What is it?”

Sandor scrutinized the wrinkled envelope. It looked like it’d been through hell a couple times and spit back out again. Sandor knew the feeling, but it did little to endear him to it.

“Someone wrote to you.” Griff eased back with a satisfied smile.

“It better be about my parole hearing.”

It likely wasn’t. That was his lawyer’s burden to bear. The poindexter pencil dick was good for one thing—negotiating Sandor’s parole. He would’ve preferred a bulldog; someone like Griff who took no shit and didn’t speak to Sandor in legalese. What his attorney lacked in dogged ferocity, he made up for in studious understanding and meticulous execution of strategies to get Sandor the fuck out of here.

“This is your new pen pal,” Griff said with wayward hesitation, enough that Sandor narrowed his eyes at the man.

“The phrase ‘pen pal’ assumes I want a friend and that I’ll write back. I’m more likely to wipe my ass with it. And I don’t want a friend.”

Sandor didn’t like most people and couldn’t be bothered with conversation. Writing letters was a hop, skip, and a jump past chit-chat that he could walk away from. Letters took commitment and intimate thought. He had no interest in giving either to a stranger.

Griff’s jaw set hard enough that Sandor knew the man ground his teeth. The corners of Griff’s mouth sunk past the ends of his mustache, which was a feat in its own right.

“Sandor, this can’t be a one-way street.”

Sandor exhaled a hard, derisive breath, and his smile was just as denigrating.

“I like you, Clyde, but let’s get something straight. Precious little in my life is my own anymore. It’ll be a frigid day in blazing hell before I let someone dictate what few decisions I have left.”

Griff bristled at the sound of his first name. Sandor used it as a weapon against the man who, for his part, wielded the double-edged sword of his relationship with Sandor. They could take well-meaning digs at one another but, when it came down to brass tacks, Griff exacted his paternal authority with a sniper’s precision.

“You were enrolled in the pen pal program on the advice of your lawyer, and it was good advice.” With the tip of his finger, Griff prodded the table with every third word as if to pound in meaning. “Your parole hearing is coming up. If the judge sees you’ve made connections on the outside, he might be inclined to think you’ll have a support system should he grant your release.”

Old man Griff had the right of it after all these years of declaring Sandor a stubborn bastard. Sandor wore that badge with honor now, even as the annoying truth unfurled his defiance. He wouldn’t say as much, though. Instead, he stared at Griff until the man spoke again.

“You’ve got me and who else? Bronn? A cop and a bartender? That isn’t enough, son. That lawyer of yours ain’t your friend.”

_Look at me, son._ Sandor loathed the term of false endearment. _“I ain’t your kid,”_ he’d correct Griff with biting insistence that he hoped would stick. It never did. Griff would just laugh it off and do it again.

“Do what you want.” With his calloused palms facing Sandor, Griff lifted his hands in acquiescence. “In the very least, I suggest you respond to help your cause. However, I think you’ll find a very sincere letter in there.”

“You read my mail?” Sandor huffed. “Isn’t that a crime?”

Griff ignored Sandor’s sardonic commentary on the justice system and leveled his eyes across the table. “Privacy is a luxury of the free. You ain’t that. Besides, I’m a nosy son-of-a-bitch. Course I read it.”

Griff’s slow, rumbling laughter hit the cinderblock walls in a damp echo.

“That it?” Sandor asked and nodded to the letter. “You wanted to hand it off? Make a little ceremony out of it?”

“No, that’s not all,” Griff sighed, and his demeanor darkened, smile faded, and the light dimmed in his eyes. “How you holdin’ up?”

There it was again—the hesitation, the maneuvering around those trip wires that remained. Only now, they were covered in dirt and it was anyone’s guess where they were or how many.

Sandor shrugged. “Same shit every day. Nothing changes.”

Five years in, Sandor lost track of the days. They bled together in one long continuum of misery. He saw what happened to men who let their sanity slip through their fingers. It always started the same. They forgot what day it was. Sandor kept a calendar and marked each day with a slight change to his routine. He liked his Thursday schedule the best.

“Warden says you’ve been having those nightmares.” Griff rested clasped hands on the table and studied Sandor. “If you want to talk—”

“I’ve never wanted to talk about it,” Sandor interjected before the thought got too far. “I lived it and that was enough.”

Sandor could tell by Griff’s eyes that a sad smile graced the man’s lips, though his mustache obscured it. “You’re a stubborn bastard.”

“And you’re an old man. Too old to sling a gun and badge around Cactus. You’ll break a hip before too long.”

Griff broke with hearty laughter emanating from his belly. He pointed a finger at Sandor.

“You haven’t changed one bit in here—mad as a hornet and cantankerous as hell. I pray to the good Lord that you’ve found enough regret to at least play the part for your hearing.”

Sandor fought the instinct to roll his eyes. They asked all the fucking time—judges, lawyers, wardens, and priests—if he regretted what he did. Regret wrapped itself around awful memories; the night where God himself couldn’t have convinced Sandor he wasn’t right back in Cholon with the taste of blood and gunpowder in his mouth and VC chattering through the wrong radio frequency. The man he damned near killed was no different than the enemy he’d been trained to fight, and the stakes no less than they had been in war. Sandor couldn’t decouple the difference, so he claimed regret on the surface, but the sentiment hadn’t seeped into his soul.

The door slammed open and Boros bounded in. “Time’s up,” he barked but couldn’t manage the bite, so it came more like a yap.

Sandor ignored him and stood from the table. Griff shook his hand again and handed off the letter.

“Thanks for the TP.” Sandor lifted the envelope and winked over his shoulder. “See ya, Griff.”

He returned to his cell just as Beric’s group rotated into the yard. His block was blessedly quiet, and he didn’t have to suffer through an earful of Beric’s bible-thumping. Sandor crawled into the bottom bunk and slumped with his back against the wall. He had every intention of tossing the envelope to a small stack of belongings on his desk, but the handwriting on the front caught his attention as did the border of printed roses.

In blue ink, the letters swooped and swirled and spelled a name he whispered to himself.

“Sansa Stark.”

Her first name was like a breathy hum, soft on a whisper and supple in his mouth. _Sansa._

Someone blacked out her address and Sandor barked a rough, rasping laugh at the irony—the forced connection of a pen pal held at arm’s length because they were all just shit birds here, not worthy of the trust. Some part of him got it. The other part resented being lumped into the categorical untrustworthiness of rapists, wife beaters, and child molesters.

Curious now, Sandor flipped open the envelope and pulled out the letter. The paper had some weight to it, and its linen-like texture said something about this Sansa Stark. She didn’t send him some torn-out notebook page with chicken scratch that he could barely read. He opened the folded stationery to find neat rows of cursive letters that filled the entire page.

He might’ve only admired the look of it, the feel of the paper, and the feminine detail of a floral border and tossed the letter aside, but the first two words hit him with strange familiarity.

_Dear Sandor._

He studied the way she wrote his name, the first three letters well-rehearsed from her own and her penmanship still deftly managing the last three. He read on, soaking up the sincerity Griff warned would be there. Sandor hadn’t expected it like this. Sansa Stark packaged up her little letter with sweet details like a matching envelope and fine paper, but she’d left something else in it too—concern over Sandor, a man she didn’t know.

He laughed at the naïveté—such an innocent gesture presented in good faith and a kind heart. His mirth at her expense said he didn’t deserve the kindness she offered, but she left it with him anyway and ended the letter with a comment about a picture. Still chuckling, Sandor dug into the envelope for the picture. She went through all the trouble. He might as well humor her.

One glance at the Polaroid and he wasn’t laughing anymore. Even the smile was wiped clean from his lips and if she were here—God have mercy on her if she was—she’d be the one collecting the last laugh.

The girl wasn’t a girl. She was a woman. Full breasts, the dip of her waist, and the flawless expanse of long legs made that clear enough. Long auburn hair fell past those perfect breasts, rivaled only by her gorgeous face—big blue eyes, slender upturned nose, and full plush lips he’d put to good fucking use if it were up to him.

It wasn’t just all that. The ineffable existed in the Polaroid too, something in the way she smiled—too genuine and sweet, back lit with a million miles more kindness than he’d known from other women. Her letter alone was a testament to that, but the proof now rested in his palm with a red-headed beauty staring back at him.

Sandor read her letter again with Sansa’s picture propped up against the wall of his bunk. He envisioned the words dripping from those captivating lips and imagined what had to be the dulcet sound of her voice. His thoughts meandered to other sounds that might spill from that mouth—breathy gasps, honeyed sighs, and begging moans.

His dick responded to the thought, hard now and pushing against the cotton fabric of his jumpsuit bottoms. Sandor turned with his back to the cell door and slipped his hand beneath the elastic waistband. He gripped his cock and closed his eyes with the vision of sweet Sansa, so seemingly innocent, and imagined her gentle hands wrapped around his shaft. He’d probably have to tell her she could be rough. He’d have to show her and guide her movements. Sandor stroked himself and his eyes cracked open to drink in the sight of her bare legs, so long and slender.

He’d ease those legs open and imagined her full breasts heaving in anticipation. A guttural groan rumbled at the back of his throat. A pant passed his lips as he stroked fast and gripped himself hard. She’d be soaking wet for him with her pink lower lips wrapped tight around his cock.

She’d be a good girl and take all of him in. He’d make sure of it and toss those long legs over his shoulders and lick her until she begged him to fuck her. Courteous and kind woman that she likely was, she’d say please.

Fuck her, he would, and in any way she wanted—hard from behind, his hips slamming against her firm ass, his dick buried deep inside her. Or maybe he’d climb on top of her, fuck her deep and slow, relishing every bit of how warm, wet, and tight she was and savoring her beautiful mouth. Or maybe he’d tell her to ease on top of him and he’d watch her go wild, riding him like her life depended on it, breasts bouncing as she sighed and shuddered and screamed his name.

He wanted it all. The thoughts came rapid, and he stroked faster with his eyes matched to her smiling face, envisioning her panting breath loud in his ear. He could almost savor how sweet her lips must be, how good she tasted between the legs, and how he’d feast on her every chance he could.

Ragged breaths escaped Sandor’s lips, and his hips bucked as if he were fucking her. He wanted her. She’d come so pretty for him and moan right along with him, her legs coiled around his hips. Sandor seethed through clenched teeth. His throat ached, and he fought the urge to scream his release. His balls tightened and Sandor rolled forward to snatch the small towel hanging from his bunk. With three fast strokes, the blinding pleasure erupted, and his release came quick. He closed his eyes and rode the wave of ecstasy, relishing every moment.

Sandor rolled onto his back and stared at the bottom of the mattress above him and the four thick slats holding it up. Once he caught his breath, he cleaned himself up and tossed the towel to the laundry pile. A quiet laugh passed his lips as a pleasured buzz slackened his limbs and loosened his muscles. Never quite summoning the inspiration, he hadn’t come like that in ages.

As Sandor dried his hands with a clean towel, he stared at the picture on the crumpled ruin of his bed sheets. Kind, innocent thing like Sansa probably didn’t deserve to have him using her photo like that. He sunk to the edge of his bed and gathered up her letter that he stuffed into the envelope. Careful not to smudge the edges, Sandor plucked the Polaroid from the bed and studied it once more.

Sansa’s smile and the light behind her eyes brought on his guilt, so Sandor stashed the Polaroid beneath the mattress and decided the best way to vanquish his guilt would be to write the girl back. It was the least he could do for defiling her pretty picture. A soft smile cracked Sandor’s lips. Perhaps she knew damn well what she was doing sending her photograph with the letter. He hadn’t much time to ponder it and even less to write her back. Escorted by a guard, Beric wandered in and the guard whistled for Sandor to come out.

For the better part of the afternoon, Sandor ignored Sansa’s letter. In the yard, he kept to himself, like he always did, and executed his regimen—the circuit of pull-ups, push-ups, and other routines that kept him in shape. He decided that if he ever had advice to give on how to survive this shithole, it’d be to keep both body and mind in check. If either slipped, it’d be a slide right into insanity and Sandor knew the evil bastards here preyed on that descent, watching like rabid dogs in the wings for poor souls to lose themselves.

A storm brewed in the sky and stirred up the yard. Like caged animals, the bastards and brutes paced the asphalt. A scuffle broke out in the corner between two men who normally stuck close to one another. It ended quick enough, but Sandor saw trouble on the rise just as sure and tumultuous as the ominous clouds marching towards them.

In the showers, the adrenaline and testosterone (or whatever mix of madness) spread like wildfire and rose with a fever. Sandor minded his own business when it came to couplings, but the forced intimacy, as Beric called it, delivered a cold slice of fear into him despite the warm water running over his body. It didn’t happen often in the showers and never as violently as it had today. He’d toweled off as the guards rushed in and whisked the unfortunate soul to the infirmary.

The chow hall wasn’t much better. An entire table howled like beasts as two men fought over a coveted pudding bowl. The pudding ended up on the floor and no clear winner emerged from the fight. Both men met the business end of a billy club and had nothing but bloody faces to show for it. Sandor ate in silence, chewing slow like he always did. That would probably be the only other advice he had—consider every meal the last. Chew slow and savor, even if it tastes like shit. And it always tasted like shit.

Sandor fell in line with the other inmates back to his cell, keenly aware of the fucker behind him walking too close and breathing too hard. The man’s presence sent up those hairs on Sandor’s neck and his fingertips tingled. Thunder pounded somewhere up above, and the inmates hollered like banshees in an uproar. Sandor’s stomach soured and, if he didn’t have a belly of steel after eating inedible slop for all these years, he might’ve vomited his dinner on the son-of-a-bitch behind him to teach the fucker a lesson.

Beric must’ve sensed the dreadful shroud that descended on the cell block. Inside their cage, the man dove headlong into scripture with his eyes shut and lips mumbling. The incessant, wispy murmurs would’ve normally sent Sandor on edge and incited an argument. Tonight, though, the unused paper and the sorry excuse of a writing utensil at Sandor’s desk beckoned. He’d never written a letter. He had no one to write to. Even if he did, the stubby golf pencil made the task annoying at best but mostly damn near impossible given the size of his hands.

Guilt wasn’t what sent Sandor to the desk where he huddled on the small stool despite how it pained his back. And it wasn’t the charade of repentance—the kind that might move a judge to sympathy—that urged him to dig a clean piece of paper and the tiny pencil from beneath a stack of books and parole documents.

It was three simple words that forced him to tuck the stubby pencil into his palm; three words that called forth his own version of sincerity, though far less polished and compassionate than Sansa Stark’s had been. Those three words encouraged Sandor to finish his letter, despite the way his hand cramped and his back ached for how he lurched over the desk.

The letter he wrote was shorter than hers and simpler too, and he might’ve spared more words if it weren’t for the fading tip of the useless pencil or the guard hollering.

“Lights out!”

In the last few moments, Sandor scribbled a hasty postscript that he probably should’ve erased. _Too late now._ The pencil didn’t have an eraser, so Sansa Stark was getting his unfiltered thoughts whether she liked it or not.

Sandor folded the paper into haphazard and asymmetric thirds and stuffed it into an empty envelope that he sealed shut. He didn’t know the first thing about getting mail out and wouldn’t have the chance to figure it out tonight.

“Get in your bunks! Lights out!” multiple guards shouted in near unison along the cell block.

One by one, the fluorescent lights flicked off and Sandor crawled into bed. Beric climbed onto the top bunk and said his nightly prayers louder than normal. With the prison plunged into darkness, the storm made itself more apparent. Each boom of thunder seemed to shake the walls. Lightning ripped through the stray windows well beyond the cell door.

Sandor closed his eyes and might’ve drifted into sleep, but a riot broke out as the storm swept through. The rowdier inmates used it as an opportunity to indulge their baser instincts. Sandor saw it for what it was—something electric and sinister charged the air and summoned the depths of depravity and darkness in those men.

He closed his eyes and counted the seconds between each clap of thunder, but it only inspired nauseating anticipation that sent his pulse pounding. _Don’t go back there. Don’t go back._

A few cells down, a guard tried to subdue an inmate. Sandor knew by the screams who had the upper hand. The guard wailed for help. The cell mate joined the fight. A trio of guards in riot gear bolted by. And then four others. The screams grew louder along with the dull thud of batons against limbs and the cracking of bones.

_The screams are only screams. They’re not your brothers here_ , Sandor bellowed inside himself. He tasted the blood in his mouth even after all these years, and those screams sounded an awful lot like the men he came upon with missing limbs or eviscerated from shrapnel and clutching their own insides blown out. They’d asked for mercy. They begged for it on their dying breath. He’d given it to them. A few screamed in their final moment as if second guessing and wanting their life back.

_Thunder is only thunder,_ he reasoned with himself but each rumble reverberated through him in a familiar way, like mortars hitting the ground—the whizzing of a fuse, the static before the explosion, that moment they knew they were in deep shit and there was nothing he could do but run and hope he had his limbs at the end of it.

Sandor gripped the loose fabric of his pillowcase. On nights like this, he wished Beric would smother him with it in his sleep. He entertained wild ideas of waking the man up and begging for mercy, just like those boys in Vietnam; the ones missing limbs; some so bloodied and mangled their uniform was the only thing that identified them as any different from those they fought. That enemy ended up just as bloodied and mangled. Somewhere across the world the survivors suffered just like he was. 

_You’re the lucky one,_ Sandor reminded himself, but his heart raced. It’d explode out of his chest like this. He’d die here. He couldn’t breathe. He thought to scream, but that’d only draw attention to himself. _Stay quiet, hide._ He squeezed his eyes shut.

_I don’t want to go back._ He didn’t mean to say it out loud. Only to think it, but the tremulous whisper spilled from his mouth, betrayed by his own lips, once and then twice. A third time. Three times. Three words.

Sandor opened his eyes and reached around the side of his mattress. He jabbed his hand underneath, and no longer cared if he smudged up the Polaroid’s edges. He pulled it out and rolled to his side where he huddled against the wall.

With his eyes well-adjusted to the dark by now, Sandor made out the way she smiled sweetly at him, the light she radiated, and the compassion she paid a complete stranger. Each time his ragged breath quickened, Sandor studied another part of her—the shine of her hair, the curl of her lips, the innocence in her eyes—until his breathing slowed and his pulse steadied.

The riot raged until the storm passed and three words got Sandor through the night: You’re not forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the warm reception of this fic! It really means a lot to me and I cannot express how excited I am to share this story with you all. 
> 
> Shout out to ShadesOfPemberley and Maroucia whose beloved pets contributed to Clyde Griffin’s name. 
> 
> Please don’t be shy in leaving some love and I’ll see you next week. Take care and stay safe!
> 
> [ Check out the Tuesday's Gone playlist on Spotify!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3LI17rqYmJMQTO5MonbJvp?si=4qbYFC5WQeaV99GwN5jfvw)


	3. Season of the Witch

The letter came on a Saturday afternoon as Sansa clipped sweet tomatoes from the vine in her backyard. The grass had grown past her ankles, and patches of weeds dotted the fenced-in space. With a gloved hand raised to her brow and shielding the sun, Sansa contemplated the shed. The reel mower needed sharpened just as bad as the grass needed cut. Neither would get done today and not tomorrow either.

Most summers, Jon landed in town once a month. He’d mow the yard and tend to other household matters, but his visits had become fewer and further between. Some part of Sansa suspected that an empty house was worthy of sadness, or at least self-pity. _Take the best of it, leave the rest of it,_ her father used to say when things got hard.

Sansa wielded that advice and “the best of it” were small things that brought her joy—pancakes for dinner; bubble baths on crisp autumn nights; walks down country roads, singing amongst the trees. Life’s little treasures could be found anywhere, even growing in the weeds.

When the mail truck rumbled up, Sansa counted that as another unexpected treasure. The engine idled loud enough that it meant the truck had stopped at the end of the driveway. She didn’t get much mail, just a couple times a week, and scarcely on a Saturday. A soft voice within said a letter would be there. _The_ letter.

Sansa rounded the shaded side of the house and relished its cool reprieve before unlocking the gate and cutting through the front yard. Thick air clung to her skin; the promise of a warm, humid summer invading the tender breeze of spring. She tugged off her gardening gloves dusted in soil and regarded the mailbox with flushed anticipation not typically reserved for such banality.

_Don’t get your hopes up._

Sansa’s adherence to her own silly rule was fickle at best. By now, she held her breath with every trip to the mailbox and cursed each bill that came and not for the money that she owed.

She blamed Jeyne. With no expectations, Sansa had sent off her letter to Sandor Clegane like a dandelion wish on the wind. Jeyne asked each day if Sansa received a reply. The answer was always the same, but the question planted a seed, nourished each time Jeyne asked, and grew wild with the week; so too had the doubts.

Sansa had been far more honest in her letter than she ever intended and blamed that bit on nerves and inexperience. Not all men appreciated the exhibition she’d given Sandor; that glimpse inside a glass heart and all that remained within.

When she reached the mailbox, Sansa closed her eyes and soaked in the scent of pavement baking in the sun, redolent in stone and earth. The mailbox’s metal handle was warm to the touch as she opened it. Sansa cracked her eyes and found one letter sitting near perfect in the middle of the mailbox. The envelope itself couldn’t claim such perfection.

Sansa studied it in her hands. She could’ve rolled over the letter with her daddy’s pickup, and it might’ve looked better. Black scuff marks marred the white envelope, tattered on two opposite edges, and the flap hung on for dear life. The imperfections didn’t matter.

_Sandor Clegane._

The envelope didn’t have his name on the return address, just the prison in Wichita Falls. An untamed smile blossomed across Sansa’s lips and she glided like a dream up the driveway, across the porch, and through her front door. Transcendent and light on her feet, she slipped through the living room and into the kitchen.

Sansa sat at the table and clutched the letter to her chest. Splendid merriment bubbled up on strange butterflies for an unknown man. Maybe that was the allure. She didn’t know him, but he didn’t know her either; not how the folk from Devil Creek knew her.

Sansa was once this town’s only claim to fame. With her Miss Texas crown, she’d been on her way to the Miss America pageant until Joffrey Lannister-Baratheon swept into her life. He uprooted her as swiftly and violently as summer storms ripped up saltbush across the plains. Sansa never made it to the big stage or any stage for that matter.

She’d stayed in Kansas City, too embarrassed to run back to Devil Creek with her tail between her legs. She rode out of town on a high horse called pride and waxing lyrical about making it in the city. In the end, she swallowed down that pride like the bitter pill it was. Sansa paid her penance down at the bar on Saturday nights, singing on a small stage for the drunk and distracted. Those familiar faces offered a painful reminder of her fall from grace.

But Sandor Clegane couldn’t gawk at that fall like the others. He couldn’t whisper to town folk about what a shame Sansa Stark’s fate turned out to be. A perfect stranger, he hadn’t seen the way life knocked her on her ass and left her in the ashes of broken dreams.

Sansa held out the envelope and admired it, imperfections and all. For a moment, she considered milking the mystery. She could save it for after she showered off the sweat and dirt and dolled herself up for tonight’s gig. Sansa quickly abandoned that notion and didn’t bother with the letter opener that would’ve neatly sliced the envelope’s top. Instead, she ripped open the flap and pulled free a single piece of thin paper.

For as much savagery as Sansa paid the envelope, she treated the letter itself with equal delicacy. She unfolded it, careful not to tear its edges.

His blocky handwriting was neat for a man, though the pencil marks blunted in the middle and faded towards the end. The postscript peeled away from the letter’s straight lines and fell along a haphazard diagonal. Sansa drew a deep breath and read slow to savor each word.

_Sansa,_

_I’ve had my fill of the graceless. You’re not that. I’m not entirely sure how you ended up writing to me, but here we are._

_I’m sorry to hear about your family. The best I can offer—hold on to who you do have. But I’m sure you don’t need a stranger to tell you that._

_You had the right of it. The years haven’t been particularly kind, but I don’t dwell on the past. What’s done is done. I did my duty in Johnson’s war, and now I’m serving my time here. There wasn’t much daylight in between. Before the draft, I mostly drifted around Texas and took jobs where I could—behind a bar, on ranches, oil pipelines, whatever paid well and put a roof over my head. I was born in San Antonio but didn’t stay long after I was grown enough to work._

_I suppose you’re wondering what I’m in for. You didn’t ask, but you don’t need to, and we won’t two-step around it. I beat a man close to death. For a while, I figured the biggest mistake I made was not finishing what I started. He lived. Just barely. I don’t claim God, but I figure it all happened for a reason. I’m not sure what._

_I don’t reckon you’ve got a man. If you were mine, you wouldn’t be writing to the likes of me. That’s for goddamn sure._

_You asked about my dreams. A man like me doesn’t attach himself to luxuries like hopes and dreams. My life’s been easier since I let those go. For you, whether or not you ever make it as a singer, you’ve carved out a life for yourself. Of that, you can be proud._

_Write if you want. Stop if you don’t. I’m not fond of bullshitters and offering kindness through obligation is bullshit by any other name._

_Sandor_

_P.S. I wouldn’t exactly complain if something inspired you to send more pictures. The one you sent certainly inspired me._

When she finished reading, the letter floated like a feather from Sansa’s trembling fingers. She gazed at the old coo-coo clock on the kitchen wall tick-tocking to the quickened thrum of her heartbeat. Sansa peered into the envelope, looking for more of him, but found it empty. So too was the back side of the letter, just vacant white space.

Sandor was blunt and maybe even assumed too much and took too many liberties in his response. Sansa Stark—the darling of Devil Creek—would’ve surely taken offense, but she wasn’t that girl anymore. _Take the best of it, leave the rest of it._

She left the sullied pieces in Kansas City and collected back the better parts of herself; the bits she’d stowed away too deep for bad people to find. But she’d put herself together differently and, perhaps by divine design, was primed to appreciate Sandor Clegane’s honesty.

Even the cheeky post-script bid her lips to curl in a flattered smile with no trace of the scandalized. Sansa read Sandor’s letter again and whispered the words to herself, conjuring up fantasies about how his voice might sound. She’d wondered if his response might spoil the mystery and deconstruct her daydreams of him. Intrigue hardly satiated, Sansa wanted more.

Sandor had spared few details, but his presence was vivid on the page—his turn of phrase; the plain way he spoke with no concern for mincing words and certainly sparing no feelings; his unapologetic honesty. In the past, Sansa would’ve written him off as rude and cast him aside as a mannerless brute. These days, that breed of man beckoned in ways gold-plated bullshitters like Joffrey never did.

Sansa already had a well-crafted plan to reply. She’d write him a poised letter full of grace and polished words. She tossed that plan out the window. It was bullshit and Sandor Clegane didn’t like bullshitters and Sansa didn’t either; not in others and especially not in herself.

When she stood from the table, her legs were far too wobbly from just a couple hours of gardening and her hands still quivered as she pulled the stationery from the drawer. In her grass-stained tank top and shorts, Sansa took a page from Sandor’s book and wrote him a letter of unrehearsed words and more candid thoughts.

Her response was plain and honest and toed the line on cheeky. One might even say she danced towards flirtation in a way that thrilled her and melted away inhibitions. When she finished, Sansa neatly folded up the letter and stowed it safely in an envelope.

She might’ve stuffed Sandor’s letter in a drawer with old birthday cards and other minor mementos, but instead retreated to the bedroom and placed his letter where she felt it belonged—her bedside drawer.

The thrill followed her into the shower where the washcloth trailed soap bubbles across her skin. Sansa hummed to herself in sublime reverie and all her senses resplendent, soaring with the stars in dreamy revelation. The soap smelled sweeter, the olive shag carpet plusher beneath her feet as she toweled off in the bedroom, and the dresses hanging in the closet were more vibrant with their bursts of color. Sansa flipped past her normal attire for gigs and to the back where the chosen one hung in a garment bag.

She called it her goddess dress and not just because it looked like it might grace the body of a Grecian queen. In it, she felt every inch a goddess in her own right.

The emerald green chiffon draped elegantly against Sansa’s lithe frame, and the plunging neckline left just enough to the imagination. The straps crisscrossed her back left bare from her waist up to her shoulders. When she walked, the long skirt shifted in ethereal wisps about her legs.

Devil Creek didn’t boast an establishment fit for this dress, but Sansa slipped into it anyhow. She’d extricate the sour memories of Kansas City attached to it and break ground on new ones. _You’ve carved out a life for yourself. Of that, you can be proud._

Sansa fiddled with the curling iron for perhaps the first time in months and pinned back her hair at the temples. The rest tumbled down her back in loose curls. Where she might’ve worried it was all too much, Sansa sidelined those concerns as she did her makeup. The second coat of mascara and the glittering cocktail ring she slipped onto her finger were for stage effect, of course. She was an entertainer after all.

But even Sansa couldn’t quite keep up that ruse. She picked up the phone and dialed Jeyne and asked the girl to bring her momma’s camera down to the bar tonight. Sansa promised to explain the reason later. That reason rested in her bedside drawer; the same one that bid her to make an extra effort tonight; the same one that seeped beneath her skin and felt like sun kissed warmth after a long, hard winter.

Before she left, Sansa retrieved Sandor’s letter and gingerly tucked it into her evening purse. Outside, the owl that’d been hanging around the past few weeks sat silent on a tree branch and watched Sansa hurry to the car.

If her neighbors thought she was an odd girl before—single in her mid-twenties and living alone—Sansa solidified that strangeness. Dressed to the nines, she climbed into her mother’s gold Cutlass. Across the street, Mrs. Marshall peered from her living room window and hovered in the sliver of space between her curtains drawn shut. That woman would fire start the rumor mill, and Sansa didn’t have it in her to care as she peeled out of the driveway.

At one of the few stoplights along Devil Creek’s main street, Sansa eyed her purse with an indulgent urge to read the letter again. The light turned green and Sansa headed for The Iron Kraken on the far edge of town. The old brick building possessed a run-down charm with its yellowed plastic sign and flickering neon lights. The roof leaked when it rained, and splotches of exposed concrete marred the front steps once painted red.

Sansa hurried up those weather-worn stairs as fast as her sling-back heels would allow, careful not to twist her ankle on the uneven slant of the vestibule floor. She breezed through another door and into the bar.

A low-hung ceiling and wood-paneled walls imparted a cavernous ambience to the space. Golden sconces dotted the walls but struggled to fill the place with light. A black and white checkered floor was dull and sticky beneath her feet and the bar smelled of stale beer and cigarette smoke. Despite the flaws, or maybe because of them, Sansa regarded the place with fondness and cherished memories resided here.

Theon—the bar’s owner and her brother Robb’s childhood friend—didn’t notice as Sansa approached the long, wood-topped bar in need of a sand and stain. She squeezed between two leather-topped stools, but her presence alone didn’t rouse him from stocking the beer cooler beneath the bar. She cleared her throat and Theon lifted his eyes but shook his head. He pointed to a sign behind the bar that read “Leave Disco at The Door”.

“You know how to read,” he chided through a wicked smile. Over the past few years, he’d let his hair grow to his shoulders in ashy waves and even sported a thick mustache too.

Sansa rolled her eyes and reappraised her attire in the adjacent gold-veined mirror. “This isn’t a disco dress,” she chirped on a cheery laugh.

“It ain’t a dive bar dress either, but you do look pretty,” Theon commented with a wink, but his eyes strayed to the door as Jeyne marched in. Her platforms stomped in an awkward rhythm. “Doesn’t she look pretty, Jeyne?”

The girl’s glossy red lips parted with a gasp and her doe eyes roved over the green dress. “Sansa Stark! Where did you even get a thing like that?”

“I had it in my closet.” Sansa shrugged but winced as the words left her lips sounding a little too much like the forced nonchalance of, _“Oh this old thing? I’ve had it for years”._

If Jeyne noticed, she was too polite to say as much. She tucked her hair behind her ears and perched on a stool that she nearly missed as her attention turned to Theon.

“I’d offer you a beer, but I don’t think that’s a beer drinking dress,” he teased and lifted one brow at Sansa.

“Nothing for me tonight,” she replied and tossed her purse to the bar. “Just tonic water and lemon, please.”

“And for you, Miss Jeyne?” Theon asked with his back to them but glanced over his shoulder when Jeyne’s tongue twisted around her words.

“I’ll take a beer,” she replied with a shy smile and her dreamy gaze trailed after Theon as he fetched their drinks.

The schoolgirl crush of Jeyne’s youth had matured into very womanly desires that ran perpendicular to a puritanical upbringing. The girl didn’t know it but, when Theon came around, she clutched the delicate gold cross hanging around her neck. She’d whip it back and forth along the chain in nervousness or maybe arousal. Sansa never quite knew what, but she knew that look. Even now, Jeyne fiddled with her necklace as Theon handed off their drinks and wandered away.

Sansa slipped onto a stool and turned to Jeyne. Her body hummed with an exhilarated flush hardly contained behind a sweeping smile. “Guess what came in the mail today?”

For a moment, Jeyne’s expression flattened with confusion before a beaming grin erupted across her lips and she bounced on her stool. “He wrote you back?”

With a giddy nod, Sansa pulled the letter from her purse and handed it over. Jeyne scanned the page with eager eyes, and Sansa observed a pink blush seep across the girl’s cheeks.

“That’s it? Seems awful short.” Jeyne flipped the page before handing it back to Sansa. “I see now why you asked me to bring my momma’s camera.” She patted the soft-sided case sitting on the bar top next to her purse. “You’re not honestly gonna send him more pictures, are you?”

“Of course, I am!” Sansa’s declaration straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “It’s the least I can do.” She motioned to the letter in her hands. “You heard the man. He’s suffered enough.”

“He says you inspired him,” Jeyne remarked with no hint of the coquettish in the way she stared blankly at Sansa. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Sansa’s head lolled to the side as she cut Jeyne a look, one that must’ve been enough to fill in the blank. The girl expelled a sharp laugh.

“What sort of man writes that?”

Sansa shrugged. She didn’t quite know and plucked her drink from the bar. “Maybe he meant inspired in a different way. Inspired to friendship perhaps, something innocent enough.”

That was a lie. She knew what it inspired, but couldn’t quite find the scandal in it, only another wave of intrigue. Sansa chased the straw around the rim of her glass and sipped her drink with eyes peeled to the small stage at the back of the bar. It was big enough for Sansa and her guitar player, Harwin, and not much else.

Jeyne gazed at Sansa with her smile now in conflicted ruin, something between selfless happiness and cautious concern.

“All I know is he doesn’t like bullshit,” Sansa cut in before Jeyne could speak and with the impulse to explain her errant enchantment with Sandor’s response. She tucked the letter back into her purse. “And I don’t either. His honesty is—”

“Brutal?”

“No, Joffrey was brutal,” Sansa corrected because the distinction mattered, and she would know. “This brand of honesty is refreshing. And I quite like it.”

“To each their own.” Jeyne slid from her stool and grabbed the camera bag along the way. “Let’s take your picture before your makeup and hair get all mussed up.”

Theon reappeared behind the bar, conveniently missing the conversation that would’ve sent him up the wall with brotherly instincts.

“Sansa, when you’re finished with your close up, Harwin’s been waitin’ on you.” Theon tipped his head to the side of the stage where Harwin tuned his guitar with a scowl noticeable even from here. “Better put the man outta his misery or I’m gonna do it for you. I don’t know what the hell has gotten into him tonight.”

“I will,” Sansa replied. “He can hold his horses for another few minutes.”

Sansa followed Jeyne across the bar. They wove through the lounge tables that each boasted two wooden bucket seats. Familiar town folk already occupied half the tables. Others had traveled from neighboring counties and places even smaller than Devil Creek.

The stage offered the best light for a picture. The rest of the bar was dim, and Theon favored red-shaded pendant lights that added to the ambiance, but not much else.

With one arm reaching for the microphone stand, Sansa’s other hand settled on her hip. Jeyne snapped the photo and fanned the Polaroid while she and Sansa waited for it to develop. When it did, Sansa recognized the difference in herself before Jeyne commented on it.

Her smile had changed but was no less candid than it had been in the first picture. Sansa posed in this photograph with the knowledge of what it would inspire and, if she should feel bad about enabling it, she couldn’t quite summon the contrition.

“You look happy again,” Jeyne observed with a sweet smile and regarded Sansa with soft eyes. “You had a dark cloud over you for so long. I’m just glad the sun is finally peeking through.”

Sansa glimpsed the picture again with a swell of pride; not the superficial kind that she’d donned in the beauty pageants of her past, but a new kind—honest and simple and well-earned for the path she’d traveled to get to this place.

“Alright, Sansa,” Harwin grumbled behind her and stepped onto the stage, his boot landing with one hard stomp when he did. “You about ready?”

She nodded but didn’t turn around and instead planted a hasty kiss on Jeyne’s cheek. “Can you put the picture with my purse? I don’t want to forget it.”

Jeyne obliged with a gentle squeeze to Sansa’s hand and headed for the bar, now lined with patrons and the din quieting as Sansa took the stage.

“You gonna be a grump all night?” She flashed a smile at Harwin, a longtime family friend. The plaid shirt he wore only made him appear stockier than he was, and, like Theon, he’d let his hair grow long and his beard thick.

“Not to you,” he muttered and gazed out at the crowd gathered around lounge tables. He strummed a chord on his guitar that drifted through the speakers, and a whistle sounded when Sansa stepped into the pool of light on stage.

“Our band doesn’t have a name,” she spoke timidly into the microphone and filled up with butterflies, even though she did this every Saturday night. “Y’all know who we are. We play for fun but don’t mind the tips and, if you have any special requests, we’ll always see what we can do.”

Harwin cut in with another chord, and the bar broke with more whistles and cheers. Encouraged by the reception, Sansa began _Jolene,_ both the song and the sentiment behind it she knew all too well. Memories of that butter blonde girl with green eyes still stung in some unusual way.

Three songs in, Sansa conquered her nerves. The tension in her limbs loosened, and she closed her eyes as she sang, relishing the warmth of the lights against her skin. One by one, almost every patron ambled up to the stage, tossed coins or even some bills into the old coffee tin, and tipped their hats to her before returning to their seat.

As the night wore on, cigarette smoke rendered the bar a vermillion haze, but halfway through a Fleetwood Mac song, Sansa spotted a stranger skulking through the crowd. With his head downturned, he puffed on a cigarette and eased towards the stage. When he lifted his head, Sansa recognized the face peering out from underneath his hat’s wide brim and the patch of gray in his mustache. She’d served the stranger a cup of coffee at the diner just a few weeks ago.

Mouth suddenly dry, Sansa missed a beat of the song. Harwin stood from his stool and lingered near her. He must’ve sensed the unease or heard the way her voice faintly quivered on a lyric too simple to blunder.

The man’s mustache twitched with a smile as he dropped a dollar bill into the coffee tin. Sansa’s eyes frantically darted to the back of the bar where Theon, Jeyne, and Wade—a rancher from the next town over—all scrutinized the stranger in unison.

Sansa finished the song with her heart racing and her hands trembling despite how she gripped the microphone now slick with a sheen of sweat. The stage lights beat hot against her skin, no longer subtle warmth but blazing heat. Sansa turned to Harwin with fresh fear surfacing.

“Let’s take a little break,” he suggested and returned his guitar to the stand next to his stool. He offered her his beer and Sansa took a long pull from the bottle. She scanned the tables, each one now filled, and the patrons forming a line at the bar to quench their thirst before the music started up again.

The stranger had returned to his perch against the back wall. He didn’t drink but stood alone; no friend by his side, no companion to converse with. Just a lone man who didn’t belong. Harwin settled next to Sansa and glowered at the stranger through narrowed eyes.

“I’ve seen that man twice now in this town,” Sansa divulged on a tremulous hush. “Who is he?”

Harwin shrugged and let his gaze sweep across the room. “No one knows. He shows up, then leaves, comes back again. The sheriff’s on it. He’s watching him.”

_At least I’m not the only one who noticed._ Relief washed through her, but the smile Sansa gave was emptied of joy.

“You gonna run him outta town?” she asked on a soft laugh, just as mirthless.

“I might,” Harwin deadpanned, but mischief stirred behind his eyes in that familiar way where Sansa didn’t quite know where his facetiousness ended, and the quiet threat began. She wouldn’t find out now. Harwin stepped off stage and crossed the room, disappearing amongst the crowd that clapped him on the back as he went.

Not content to navigate the hoard, Sansa knelt at the front of the stage and gathered up the coffee tin. On most Saturday nights, only change filled the bottom. Sometimes a few dollar bills showed up and once a drunk had dropped in a ten-dollar bill, probably by accident. Tonight, dollar bills filled the canister and a layer of coins covered the bottom.

“As much as I love Dolly and Fleetwood, I have a request, if you don’t mind.”

Sansa stilled. Her hands, now clumsy and shaking, almost dropped the coffee tin altogether. _It’s him._

His voice matched his presence—ominous and dark in the deep rumble that poured from his lips. He had a northern accent too, clearly not from Devil Creek. His words sounded as flat as the Midwestern plains to Sansa’s ears, and the difference only set him further apart and illuminated that he didn’t belong.

She lifted her eyes. The stranger loomed over her with his arms crossed about his chest. Another difference—most regulars never requested songs in between sets. They waited until the end of the night and the requests were more of a suggestion for the following week.

“Oh, yeah?” was all Sansa could muster. Her pulse pounded loud in her ears and her breaths came tattered through parted lips. She swallowed hard and eyed the crowd, hoping like hell someone would wander over.

The stranger shuffled forward until the tips of his boots collided with the stage’s wooden edge. “You wouldn’t happen to know _Season of the Witch,_ would you?”

Sansa knew it and so did Harwin, but they only played it in the run-up to Halloween. It had a way of infusing the macabre into gigs that were meant to be lighthearted.

“No, I don’t know that one. Sorry,” Sansa lied and avoided the stranger’s gaze. Instead, she gathered the bills from the tip jar and smoothed them down in an orderly stack.

Gruff laughter spilled from the stranger’s mouth. “That’s a cryin’ shame.”

“I don’t see anyone tearing up over it,” Sansa replied, and something possessed her to meet the man’s black eyes.

She didn’t put a smile on the end of it either, something to honey coat the churlish way she stared daggers at him. The man received the message loud enough that he chuckled again and walked away.

Too fearful to venture out into the crowd, Sansa stayed on stage but abandoned the tip jar. Harwin cut across the room again with a tonic water and lemon for her.

“One more song then we call it?” Harwin asked, and Sansa nodded as she took the glass from him and murmured a “thank you”.

She never pegged Harwin as a particularly insightful man. He was a few years older than Robb but had worked as her father’s ranch hand since the age of fourteen. He knew the shift in the winds, her father used to say, and Sansa always nodded like she knew what that meant, but never did until nights like this.

Harwin felt the shift towards the sinister just as surely as Sansa had. The crimson glow of the bar just made it worse, but something oppressive lingered in the air, rising on the smoke and dampening the raucous laughter.

They played one last song, but Harwin missed the beat and Sansa forgot a few lyrics. It didn’t matter. The audience had stopped paying attention and half the crowd had thinned out. Those who remained clapped at the end, more out of courtesy than admiration.

When they stepped off stage, Sansa walked with Harwin to the back of the bar where Jeyne, Theon, and Wade huddled together, engrossed in something sitting on the bar top and garnering their full attention.

“My voice is shot tonight,” Sansa fibbed, hoping the lie would work double time in calling it an early night and explaining the way her voice wobbled through the last bit of the set.

Harwin shrugged. “We all have off nights. This is surely one of them. For all of us.”

_For all of us._ Sansa didn’t like the way he said it with more dread than he probably meant to reveal. He tried to mask it with a bit of laughter and ignored the worried glance she gave him as they approached the bar.

Jeyne lifted her head from the huddle with the promise of tears hanging in her eyes and her cheeks absent their normal flush that should’ve been there given how close Theon was to her. He too looked overcome with something—not tears but the equivalent for him; solemn unease that drew his mouth into a frown.

“What are you looking at?” Sansa’s throat constricted, and the question came hoarse.

“They fetched a missing girl from a creek in my town,” Wade intoned and stepped aside for Sansa to see the Saturday newspaper resting on the bar top.

Sansa hadn’t much supper to speak of, but her stomach roiled as if she might bring up what little she’d eaten before leaving the house.

_Life Imitates Horror Film: Texas Chainsaw Maniac Slaughters Again_

In bold letters, the headline stretched above an image of five police officers gathered around a white sheet with a body underneath. Sansa had paid little mind to the evening news she caught snippets of while fixing supper or the newspaper headlines she’d spied while serving coffee at the diner.

Missing girls were big city problems, but in the last month it became apparent that these girls weren’t just runaways or victims of unfortunate tragedies. The pattern emerged. Young girls in small Texas towns disappeared and ended up dumped along roads or in ravines. It’d happened enough that the monster earned themselves the moniker now splashed across the headline of Wade’s hometown paper.

“It’s disgusting,” Jeyne remarked and rubbed her bare arms blanketed in goosebumps. She stared up at Theon, who nodded in somber agreement.

“The murders or the headline?” Sansa asked and skimmed the front-page text. The girl was young, only seventeen. Out of respect, the authorities hadn’t named her yet, but the way Wade had gone ashen said he knew who she was. Secrets didn’t last long in small towns.

“Both,” Jeyne answered and flipped over the newspaper to hide the horror, as if it were that simple. 

“Maybe whoever it is will skip past Devil Creek. Nothing ever happens in this town.”

Sansa only meant it as consolation, as much for Jeyne as herself. A chill shot down her spine at the prospect of leaving the safety of numbers to head to an empty home.

“That’s not funny,” Jeyne whispered and shot Sansa a faintly offended look.

“I wasn’t going for humor, just looking for a bright side.”

Jeyne wrapped her arms tight across her middle. “Well, you accomplished neither.”

“If he comes around here, he ain’t coming back out,” Harwin intervened with what sounded like a vow and Sansa believed him. Perhaps the only saving grace—a murderer in Texas was bound to meet the barrel end of a pistol or shotgun at some point.

Jeyne’s eyes went wide and her voice wavered with worry. “I hear he’s a drifter. Doesn’t stay long in one place.”

“Where did you hear that?” Sansa pressed and crossed her arms over her chest. The bar held a sudden chill, as if someone invited in the cold. “Just sounds like gossip to me.”

“My sister’s cousin-in-law,” Jeyne divulged and lowered her voice. The circle drew close to listen. “She was driving home late one night after choir practice up at the church. She came up on a car on the side of the road. She almost stopped, thinking the driver needed some kind of help, but she got that twisty feeling in her stomach that told her to move on, so she did. Two days later, a girl washed up along the creek, right near where she saw that car. I know it in my bones. It was him.”

Jeyne prodded the newspaper to solidify her story and perhaps garner belief. Sansa didn’t doubt her but clung to the comfort that it was nothing more than small town hearsay and Jeyne had relayed a bastardized version of what really happened.

Sansa locked eyes with Jeyne with what had to be congruent concern painted over their faces. Men had it easier in this world; it was just a fact that seemed to dawn on Wade, Harwin, and Theon at the same time. Theon wrapped one arm across Jeyne’s shoulders and Harwin paid Sansa a sympathetic smile. As for Wade, he tried his best. His voice carried across the bar, almost empty now. 

“You girls get yourselves some husbands and spare those pretty faces the wear and tear of worry.”

Sansa rolled her eyes, though she knew what he meant despite his unintended carelessness—the world could be a dangerous place for a woman on her own. It was an unfortunate truth, but the truth nonetheless.

Other than Jeyne, none of them knew about Joffrey, not from her mouth anyway. But sometimes they’d look at her in a pitiful way reserved solely for women who’d suffered through the same affliction that she had. Rumors spread in this town that was too small for dark secrets.

“I manage just fine,” Sansa retorted with haughty defiance to mask surmounting fear. “Sometimes a woman’s got to stand on her own two feet without a man.”

“I admire your spirit, Sansa,” Wade rumbled with laughter and swayed with one too many drinks. 

Dubious, Sansa lifted one brow at him. “I see you admiring much more than my spirit.”

Strained laughter traveled the circle until they all fell into an uneasy quiet and eyed one another with hesitation to go their separate ways. The night had ended on an eerie and unnerving note that left Sansa sick to her stomach.

Wade departed first and stumbled to the door with Harwin guiding the way and insisting the man sleep it off either in his truck or on Harwin’s couch. Jeyne walked out with them, too afraid to be alone now and planning to drive straight to her sister’s house to stay the night.

Sansa gathered up her purse with Sandor’s letter inside, bid Theon good night, and began towards the door just a few steps behind Jeyne and the others.

“You better lock up your doors and windows from now on,” Theon hollered after her.

He always erred on the side of jovial humor that took nothing too seriously, even grave matters like war and death. When Sansa turned around, Theon regarded her with entreating eyes devoid of mischief and he didn’t spare a smile either.

“I will,” she promised and retreated into the night not cold by any means, but the wind picked up and a dry breeze chilled her bare skin. In the parking lot, Wade had already climbed into Harwin’s truck. With his hat covering his face, he was probably well on his way to sleep. A few cars down, Harwin held the door of Jeyne’s car open for her.

Before Sansa could reach the Cutlass, gravel crunched behind her. She spun around with her keys in her hand and the jagged edges digging into her palm.

The stranger stood before her, not tall or stocky but his presence still imposing. Black hair jutted out from underneath his cowboy hat. Sansa took slow steps away from him, fully prepared to tell him she’d scream or call the sheriff who already had his eye on him.

“Ma’am,” he said before Sansa could speak and tipped his hat to her. “You watch out for those bad people in this world.”

Possessed once more with strength she hadn’t expected or perhaps sheer madness of wild will, Sansa matched his eyes. When she spoke, her words came as cold as the evening chill and deliberate in the closest Sansa might’ve ever come to threatening a stranger.

“Oh, I’m watching, mister.”

Sansa clutched her purse where Sandor Clegane’s letter rested safe inside. She held it to her chest as if drawing the man himself near. Blunt words, simple honesty, and something else heavy between the lines—it all brought some wayward comfort as the stranger disappeared into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank you all so much for the love and support on the first two chapters of this story! I’m so happy that so many of you enjoyed the introduction of Stetson-wearing Sandor Clegane! So much love to you and I cannot express how grateful I am for the wonderful reception! 
> 
> See you next week for another Sandor chapter! 
> 
> [ Check out the Tuesday's Gone playlist on Spotify!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3LI17rqYmJMQTO5MonbJvp?si=4qbYFC5WQeaV99GwN5jfvw)


	4. Behind Blue Eyes

Colman. Andrews. Penczak.

Anticipation hung heavy in the air along with the scent of sweat and grime and even blood long since cleaned. That smell was one Sandor would never soon forget. It was the way of the world and the scars of war.

At the front of the cell, he stood upright and rigid in one corner. Beric stood in the other but surveyed him with a shit-eating grin. Sandor stared back and would move heaven and earth to slap that smile clean off Beric’s face.

Mail call was as much punishment as it was privilege. A shaming ritual was more like it. Week after week, the same bastards received letters from loved ones—spouses, children, parents, siblings, aunts who hadn’t given two shits about them on the outside.

Sandor had long ago memorized the order of names. He mouthed them to himself as the guards shouted for all to hear. As if the loss of privacy wasn’t enough, they hurled envelopes into the cells and snickered as inmates fought over those letters because sometimes they contained pictures of pretty girls.

On it went down the line with names called out. Sandor had never received a letter at mail call. He had no family to begin with, no one back home counting down the time until he’d see the light of day. It’d been that way during the war too, and he’d gotten used to the unusual sting of getting passed over. These days it annoyed more than it wounded.

Even Beric received mail, mostly letters from adoring women who’d adopted his bizarre interpretation of scripture. His teachings had gained traction in the strung-out hippie communes. The man led a cult from behind bars and, in the meantime, meticulously tracked which inmates received mail. Beric reminded Sandor every so often that only he and a few other inmates—mostly child molesters—had never received a letter. With a sneering smile and his good eye alight in sick amusement, he’d taunt Sandor with that bit of trivia.

Lighthorse. Simon. Waite.

Boros’s voice echoed through the cell block. Whipped up in a frenzy, the inmates shouted and pounded the metal bars. Boros slowed to a stop in front of Sandor’s cell. His face was a mask of fury as he flicked two letters at Beric through the bars.

“Dondarrion!” His voice boomed and his face flushed redder than Sandor had ever seen.

“Clegane!” Along with Sandor’s last name, spittle flew from Boros’s thin, cracked lips

The cell block erupted. If Boros wasn’t standing so near, Sandor might not have heard the man amongst the chaos.

Incensed and with hands shaking, Boros pelted the letter at Sandor. It hit his chest and flopped to the floor. Beric shrieked and collided to the ground. He scurried and slid across, but Sandor snatched up the letter before Beric could reach it. The envelope crumpled in his fist and his chest heaved as he glared at the man.

“Touch anything in this cell that belongs to me and it will be the last thing you ever do in your shit-filled life.”

Beric sprung to his feet and backed away in slow steps. Only a fool would’ve assumed that the warning stuck. Something sinister and calculating stirred within the man, and Sandor could already see the wheels spinning in his demented mind. Beric relented, at least for now, and plopped to his mattress. He tore open one of his letters, a fat envelope probably filled with the deranged rantings of a follower.

Sandor turned to his own bunk and cradled the letter against his chest. Only one person would’ve written to him. His mouth went dry and breath hitched as he peeled the envelope away from his body.

Printed roses and Sansa Stark’s handwriting adorned the envelope, and Sandor spared a soft smile.

He kept her picture beneath his mattress, and, at some point, her first letter had joined it too. They existed in effortless tandem with one another. So too did the salacious desires that her picture inspired and the way her sweet words had planted themselves in some vacant space he hadn’t noticed in himself.

Some nights he stared at her photograph as he drifted towards sleep, only tucking it away when fatigue besieged him and his eyes grew heavy. Other nights, the arousal was too much. He’d take himself in hand, stroking as quiet as he could to visions of her lips wrapped around his dick or the gasps she might make as he fucked her fast and slow, whatever the hell she wanted.

He’d been shameless. Lecherous. Insatiable. For a great long while, Sandor had left her letter on his desk. Maybe for the shame. He didn’t quite know, and it didn’t seem to matter until he read it again. And then once more.

He knew most of the words by now, the way she crafted her sentences, and the sentiment it imparted. The letter then joined her picture beneath his mattress and his thoughts of her expanded beyond just how she might make him feel or how he might return the favor, but to running down whatever existed between the lines.

Sandor sat on the edge of his mattress and waited for the moment Beric was engrossed in his own letters. Only then did Sandor rip open the envelope’s flap and pull out not one but two pages of stationery.

Her handwriting was the same—pretty rows of swooping letters—but Sandor set the pages aside and peered into the envelope for what he hoped was there. Sure enough, she had included another Polaroid.

Beric’s eyes snapped to Sandor. He set the envelope down and discreetly covered it with his leg, obscuring both the object of Beric’s sudden interest and the treasure tucked inside. When Beric flipped to his stomach and continued reading, Sandor expelled a quiet breath and lifted the linen pages of Sansa’s letter.

__

_Dear Sandor,_

_Your letter came today as I was in the garden claiming what I could of my sweet tomatoes. The rabbits got the rest. I suppose it’s my fault. My backyard could pass for a jungle. I might as well have invited them in for tea too._

_You don’t like bullshitters and I give you my word I won’t bullshit you. To prove it, here’s a bit of honesty:_

_I still haven’t changed out of my gardening clothes. I wanted to write as soon as I could. I hope that’s alright. I don’t want to burden you with more letters than you know what to do with, though I suspect you’ve got some time on your hands. I’ll send you as many as you’d like!_

_I’m sincerely sorry that you’ve suffered. I do think of you, if that’s any comfort at all. A storm came through Devil Creek, and I wondered how long it took to get to you. The next day, I pulled out a map from my glove compartment to measure the distance between us. It’s not that far._

_I didn’t ask what you were in for because I decided it didn’t quite matter. I’d write to you anyway. But here’s some more honesty: I’m relieved to know that you aren’t in for brutalizing a woman or a child._

_You reckon right about a man. It’s just me. You aren’t the only one who doesn’t like bullshitters, and I was once engaged to the king of them all. He was fool’s gold, and it didn’t take long to see all that was rotten underneath. Thank you for the advice. I’m a good Texas girl, so we’re no longer strangers and I consider your words those of a new friend._

_And what about you? Did you leave a woman behind, someone pining for you? If you did, will she care much that I’m writing to her man and measuring the miles between us? Do you have any other family?_

_You said you weren’t sure why I wrote to you and that you don’t claim God but suspect that things happen for a reason. I left God behind when I moved to Kansas City and haven’t picked him back up again, so I suppose you could say I don’t claim religion either. I agree with you—there’s a purpose behind certain things. And there was a purpose for us connecting through these letters. I suppose we will have to find out what that purpose is._

_I sing down at the bar tonight, so I’ll see about getting another picture. I’ll even wear my favorite dress just for you._

_With compassion and intrigue, not obligation—_

_Yours,_

_Sansa_

_P.S. Might I get a picture of you too? If not, perhaps you’d paint that picture with words._

The smiled that rested on Sandor’s lips broadened, racing from one corner to the other. There wasn’t much he could do to stop it, so he grinned like a fool and scratched at the stubble on his chin.

He hadn’t hung his hopes on her writing him back. He didn’t spare cleverly crafted words in his first letter and took no interest in putting up appearances of gentility for the sake of a pen pal he hadn’t asked for. He gave her an out and fully expected her to take it. He had even tacked on a postscript that should’ve sent a good Texas girl running for the hills.

But it hadn’t.

Sansa’s words were bolder than her last letter, and more honest because of it. She’d found her intrigue in him and he was finding his in her too. Between the lines of her pretty words and the margins filled up with sweetness she seemed to so effortlessly exude, a fervent curiosity surfaced and spread like vines. Refusal to tame them, she’d let them grow instead and it seemed to him that they were each cultivating something that neither had anticipated.

A familiar cadence of stomping footsteps tore down the line of cells. Sandor folded Sansa’s letter as Boros materialized at the cell door.

“Dondarrion, preacher’s here,” he grumbled. “Chapel time.” The man glowered at Sandor with all his scowling hatred behind it. 

Beric hopped from his bunk and gathered up his Bible that looked like it’d come straight from hell with its tattered, dog-eared pages and missing cover. All that time Beric spent with the preacher didn’t do shit to set the lunatic straight. He bounded to the door with the same fervor he probably reserved for the Promise Land.

After Boros shackled him up, Beric glanced at Sandor. “The Lord would welcome you into His house of worship.”

Sandor snorted a derisive laugh. “He can shove the invitation up his holy ass. It’s safer outside that house than in.”

_I’ll pay for that later,_ Sandor surmised as he observed Boros reach new heights of haughty fury. The man yanked Beric from the cell and slammed the door shut so hard that the metal still vibrated after Boros disappeared with Beric down the row. Sandor was frugal with his digs at the man but had finally sorted out the exchange rate of what was well worth it, and this certainly was.

Beric would pray for Sandor’s immortal soul. For his part, Sandor would undo all that spiritual work as he pulled free the envelope still under his thigh. He gnawed his bottom lip in anticipation of what was inside—another picture of sweet Sansa Stark.

He retrieved the Polaroid and let the envelope drift to the floor. Sandor studied her picture and tried to wrap his head around what a divine creature like Sansa was doing sending him something like this. The green dress obscured her long legs, but it made up for the discretion by showcasing gorgeous tits, firm and perfect as far as he could tell. The way she posed and the look she gave the camera danced somewhere on the line between coquettish and seductive. If he didn’t know any better, Sandor would say that dalliance was deliberate.

He swung his legs onto the bed and eased back with one hand propped behind his head and the other holding up the Polaroid. A wicked grin creased his lips. With it came a drop of happiness in an otherwise hollow existence. Sandor reached for her letter and read it again with her picture pinned against the pages beneath his thumb.

She was a good Texas girl with the right kind of sweetness—the kind that suggested she knew how to cherish someone, heart and soul, but not so good she wouldn’t sink to her knees to cherish in another way.

In return, he’d worship between her legs and the closest thing to God he was ever bound to know was the embrace of a woman like her. It was the only religion he was interested in and he’d fuck her good enough to make her a believer too.

The thought and her picture left him hard and, weeks ago, he would’ve abandoned her letter in favor of fantasy. Now, he was a man at war with himself as his eyes roamed her handwriting and drifted to her bright smile and the ineffable radiance that she carried.

_Don’t go thinking she’s yours._ Past precedence tore into his daydream of Sansa, the little songbird. And what a little bird she was…

Sandor rolled out of his bunk and put that turbulent thought on a shelf because he’d write his own rule book for the paltry bits of free will he still possessed. That free will sent him to his desk and to the sawed-off end of what used to be a proper pencil. He’d at least gotten a fresh one and extra paper because he too had more to say on this round.

He wasn’t deliberately clever. Sandor’s cunning was more akin to biting sarcasm that dabbled in brusque flirtation, too rough-around-the-edges for most women. He knew enough of Sansa—all the traces of herself she’d left on the page or tucked in the envelope—to take his chance. She didn’t seem to like bullshitters any more than he did, and two could play the game of running the proverbial ball up the field. And if she wanted honesty, she’d be getting it in spades with his letter.

When he finished, Sandor stuffed the pages in an envelope with a perpetual smile painted on his lips. He retreated to his bunk to take care of other matters.

Sandor took himself in hand like he had so many times in the past week and closed his eyes with new manifestations of her—the way she posed, her sultry gaze, her auburn hair lit up with stage light and sweeping down her back. He stroked slow and savored his own touch and bit his bottom lip to stifle the groans.

He imagined spilling that green dress to the floor and reaching around from behind to swipe between her legs. His visions of her had changed, though. They weren’t of him bending her over and fucking her rough from behind. Rather, he thought of draping her legs over his shoulders and tenderly kissing the inside of her thighs until she shivered and sighed. They were of him rocking slow with her straddling his lap, each movement driving his cock deeper inside of her to relish every inch that he could.

Sandor stroked quicker. His panting breaths matched the pace and he thought of her arms wrapped around his shoulders, holding on and sighing his name. She’d kiss him willingly and whisper that she was his. _“Yours.”_ She’d even signed her letter that way. _Mine._

He gripped his shaft hard, tight like he imagined she’d be, warmer than his palm and soaking wet for him. All for him. His pleasure crowded out the thoughts, singular as the pressure rose. Noises sounded outside the cell and came closer. He gripped harder and stroked faster until his peak broke upon him, surging as he buried his face in the pillow and cried out her name with his release. With his seed spilled in his palm, Sandor quickly tucked himself back into his jumpsuit bottoms. He rolled out of his bunk and to the sink attached to the back wall.

Two guards and a few inmates passed Sandor’s cell. He washed his hands with bitter disappointment that he’d been robbed of the quiet moments after his release; the time he might spend wondering how she’d feel in his arms and with her head against his chest.

When the dinner call came, Sandor took Sansa’s picture, admired it once more, and hid it beneath his mattress with the other Polaroid and first letter. His smile lingered as he filed out of his cell and fell in line, but the mirth must’ve followed him out too.

In the chow hall, the other inmates watched him and whispered amongst themselves. Their attention on him was an oppressive presence and sent the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end. Sandor ambled down the line to receive his slop on a tray; a brown blob on a bed of rice that hoped on a good day it could pass for beef and gravy. Not even the cooks knew what the fuck it really was.

Sandor took up his usual spot—the far corner with his back against the wall. He sat at the end of a table that was bolted to the floor, just one big hunk of metal with a bench connected to it. Sandor ate fast tonight, though this dish defined new levels of rancid. He gulped down his carton of milk and glass of water, keenly aware that he was still being watched.

The others at his table shoved their food around their trays but hadn’t eaten much. The inmate at the end, Lem, was a skinny fucker but mean as a hornet. He leaned forward and glared at Sandor with unabashed intensity.

“Whatchu get in that letter?” Lem growled.

The din fell away. Sandor scanned the room and, sure enough, the inmates at adjacent tables had all turned to look.

He dropped his eyes to his tray and plate emptied of food, though his stomach was no happier for it.

“Not a damn thing that’s any of your concern.”

“You got no family,” an inmate at another table jumped in. “Even if you did, I doubt they’d write to your ugly mug.”

Half the hall rolled with laughter and the other half turned towards the commotion. Three tables over, Beric stood on the bench and projected his voice as if preaching to his disciples.

“It’s a woman!” Beric shouted and the words rung loud through the hall. “Her name’s Sansa.”

Malignant rage ravaged Sandor with the thought of Beric rifling through his only possessions and the prize among them—Sansa’s letters and the sweet words meant only for him. Beric received more letters than any other inmate, and yet it clearly hadn’t been enough. He consumed what wasn’t meant for him.

“She must either be blind or stupid to write to the likes of you,” Lem cackled with food in his mouth. “She send you a picture?

Sandor’s silence spoke on his behalf. He shook with unreleased fury and pushed himself from the table, ready to propel from the seat at any moment.

“Just wait until we all get a hold of it!” A man’s thundering voice boomed from the corner. Sandor didn’t know who spoke, but the words prompted half a dozen men around him to smack their lips in a show of perversion that boiled Sandor’s blood.

An inmate from the adjacent table turned around with his face flush from laughter and tears spilling down chubby cheeks.

“I’m sure someone would let you put it on the back of their head. All you gotta do is close your eyes and pretend it’s her. It all feels the same.”

Sandor felt his face contort in disgust. Years ago, a few had tried to seduce him into whatever carnal pleasure they hoped he could provide, assuming his dick matched his height in proportion. Sandor had summarily beaten the notion clean out of one of them. No one ever approached him again. 

His hand curled around the metal spork and his jaw set so hard that pain radiated in his cheeks. His pulse rose and brow beaded with sweat as the heat of the room sunk into his skin.

“You gonna shank me with that?” Lem taunted on something close to a howl.

“You wanna try me?” Sandor seethed through clenched teeth. “I’m sure I’d find a way to make you suffer.”

The spork didn’t threaten in the same way that makeshift shanks did, but the dull, serrated edge and the short prongs could do enough damage in the right hands, including his. Lem looked unimpressed.

“Problem is,” he started and swiveled to straddle the bench. “You think you’re better than the whole lot of us.”

“It’s not a thought, it’s a fact,” Sandor sniped without hesitation.

The others had taken unusual affront to the fact that Sandor never fell in with a clique. He kept to himself and somehow remained unscathed and largely unbothered as a lone wolf. One by one, each faction failed to recruit him and saw in Sandor the unaffiliated waste of strength and brutality.

Lem scooped up a spork full of slop, but the utensil didn’t travel to his mouth. Instead, he held back the prongs and flung the food that landed square on Sandor’s cheek. Another round of raucous laughter rippled through the chow hall like a stone dropped in water.

Sandor sucked in a breath and slowly wiped his cheek with a napkin that he tossed aside. He flew from his seat and hurled towards Lem, who shrieked and fell to his ass. Eyes wide with fright, Lem scrambled away and just as Sandor lurched forward a hard blow landed at his ribs.

He groaned in pain and spun towards Boros who wielded his billy club and reared his hand back for another hit. By instinct, Sandor’s arms lifted in defense, but Boros cracked him in the ribs again and solidified little more than the fact that he was a coward.

Four more guards rushed into the chow hall. Where his blood smoldered mere moments ago, a chill now worked its way through Sandor. The spork was still secure in his clenched fist, but he tucked it into the waistband of his pants near the small of his back.

This many guards pouring into the hall usually meant trouble, and tonight was no exception. After the inmates cleared away their trays, Boros strutted to the center of the room with his thumbs hooked on his belt loops.

“Cell search!” he bellowed. “Line up!”

The inmates fell into a single file line. It didn’t matter if they hadn’t eaten. The others had occupied themselves with taunting Sandor instead of finishing their meals. They’d go hungry tonight and Sandor would feast on that knowledge well into morning.

He took his spot in line and marched to his cell where he and Beric stood outside, one on each side of the open door. They waited their turn as the guards systematically tore through each cell. After a while, Sandor recognized a glaring anomaly in tonight’s search—it was taking far longer than it should. By the wails alone and the sheer volume of inmates being carted off to God knew where, Sandor concluded that the searches were more thorough than they had been in recent memory.

_I got nothing to hide,_ he consoled with grim reprieve, but a realization blindsided him with the speed and force of a freight train.

Sansa’s pictures.

He peered over his shoulder to his mattress, as if that might magically inspire those Polaroids to disappear long enough that Boros wouldn’t get his grubby hands on them.

As the guards reached the neighboring cell, Sandor’s mouth filled with saliva and his breaths quickened to short little bursts. His mind raced with the possibilities. If only he could slip in there and hide the pictures somewhere safe. In his periphery, Sandor noticed Beric staring at him and the man seemed to read his thoughts. It sent a devious smirk to trail across Beric’s lips.

The message was clear. If Sandor made a move, even just an inch, Beric would sound the alarm. It didn’t matter anyhow. The guards reached their cell and Boros shuffled up to Sandor. He stood toe-to-toe with him and sported a smile that said he would savor this.

“You look nervous. You hiding something?” Boros goaded.

Sandor kept his eyes straight ahead and wouldn’t give the fucker the satisfaction of seeing him flinch.

Beric cleared his throat. “I’d check under his mattress if I were you.”

Boros erupted with a smile, and he and the other guard strode into the cell. They upended everything on Sandor’s desk. The books hit the floor, and he heard the useless golf pencil roll across the ground, and Sandor didn’t think it was all that useless anymore. He needed it. He closed his eyes at the sound of paper tearing. He didn’t believe in God but prayed like hell that Sansa’s letter had been spared.

A mattress hit the floor and Sandor’s eyes snapped open. “Clear!” He heard the other guard shout, but the thud of the other mattress followed.

“Bingo!” Boros cried with glee and whooped and hollered as he tore out of Sandor’s cell with just as much gusto as he had entered. Only now, he’d found what he was looking for.

The man’s face lit up like a Christmas tree and his lips split with a broad smile. Boros removed his hand from behind his back and held up the two Polaroids. The top one contained Sansa’s smiling face and the green dress just as pretty as ever, but Sandor endured a sharp pang in his chest at the thought that he’d only just received that picture. He hadn’t even had the chance to study it like he had the other, noticing all the little details of her.

“What do we have here?” Boros taunted, his words slow and drawn out. “You wanna explain this to me?”

Sandor bit his bottom lip hard to stop the vile words from spilling out. They came anyway and so too did his furious gaze drilling into the fat fuck in front of him.

“You that fucking stupid that you need me to tell you?”

Boros’s lips collapsed with a scowl. He reared back and spit in Sandor’s face. Still matching Boros’s incensed glare, Sandor turned his head and wiped his cheek against his shoulder. 

“Pretty thing,” Boros hollered and waltzed down the line of unchecked cells. The inmates stood at attention, but all gaped as Boros waved the Polaroids over his head. “What do we think, boys? Y’all like redheads?”

Up and down the line, the cell block exploded into chaos—whistles and feral howls, vicious animals, all of them. Sandor’s fingers curled to his palms where his nails cut into the flesh. Dizzy from rage, he swayed lightly in place.

Boros spun on his heel and retreated as if remembering the pleasure he might claim from Sandor’s reaction. His boots collided against the ground in triumphant strides towards Sandor’s cell.

“Long legs, perky tits, dick-sucking lips! Looks like Mr. High and Mighty has himself a little redheaded singing girlfriend.”

The wall shook. Feet pounded against the floor. Every inmate seized the opportunity to unleash all that roamed wild within. Sandor’s heart beat loud. Then louder. Louder still. The buffeting of a helicopter. Wet heat seeped beneath his uniform. He was overcome with the stench of sweat and blood. So much blood. Sticky against his skin.

He squeezed his eyes shut and, when he did, it was her face he saw; beautiful smile, bright blue eyes. _Breathe. Breathe. Just breathe._

Sandor opened his eyes again when Boros’s stench filled his nostrils. The man thrust the pictures in Sandor’s face and forced him to look.

“It’s a shame you’ll never see her,” Boros snarled. “And if you do, she’ll take one look at that ruined face of yours and hightail it out of Wichita Falls, never to be heard from again.”

Sandor’s gaze fell to the dingy concrete floor between him and Boros, but the man held the Polaroids in Sandor’s field of vision.

“I think I’ll take these home with me and make good use of them.”

The words alone catapulted Sandor to the bounds of his wrath, the place where he teetered on the edge of losing it altogether, but the way Boros licked his bottom lip and the seedy glint behind his eyes sent Sandor lunging towards him. Boros stumbled backwards. His fleshy jowls wobbled with disbelief as the other guard landed a swift blow into Sandor’s stomach, hard enough that he doubled over and gasped for breath.

“I’ll fucking kill you,” Sandor choked and something inside him felt like it was crumbling with a loss he hadn’t felt in years.

He stared at the pictures in Boros’s hands, his singular focus, the only thing that mattered. The backdrop of hollers and shouts was snuffed out and replaced with whispers.

As if a switch had been flipped, Boros took one large step away from Sandor and stood upright like a soldier standing at attention. His expression went vacant, wiped clean from the vitriol that’d just been there.

Only one man inspired such a collective reaction, and Sandor knew the warden’s footfalls well after all these years—determined and firm and lacking the false prestige of Boros and the other guards. The warden marched down the line of cells towards Sandor. He was a tall, lean man with a buzz cut despite having long retired from the service. The only liberty he offered himself was a well-groomed mustache two shades lighter than the dark brown hair on his head.

The warden stood between Sandor and Boros with his hands planted firm on his hips.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded.

Boros couldn’t seem to look at the man and answered on a meek hush.

“Sir, we found contraband in his cell.” He handed over Sansa’s photographs. The warden ripped them from Boros’s stubby fingers and paid them only a brief glance. 

“You know damn well these aren’t contraband,” the warden snapped and flung one arm towards the unsearched cells. “Quit being an asshole and keep moving.”

The warden spun smooth on his heel and bounded in the direction from which he’d come.

“Walk with me, Clegane,” he barked, and Sandor trailed a few steps behind with a guard taking up the rear.

The man spared no small talk or pleasantries as Sandor followed him through a maze of corridors and secured entries. The warden had taken a shining to him and Sandor couldn’t quite say why. As Griff told it, the warden didn’t believe Sandor belonged here and that a combat veteran should be treated with sympathy, not thrown behind bars for transgressions that grew from war’s invisible foe.

Sandor didn’t know what inspired the warden to treat him with the respect he did today, but it was enough that the man led the way to his office and motioned for Sandor to sit on the other side of a large wooden desk. The guard hovered outside the open door.

The warden eased into his seat, leather crackling against his weight. He spared few decorations for the wood-paneled space—just a bookshelf with a folded flag and a few other medals from his service; an old typewriter; and a rust-splotched filing cabinet. Behind the desk, Sandor admired the large window that overlooked a long expanse of grass and trees and the sun setting against the horizon. The man stared at Sandor and rested his elbows on the desk with his fingers steepled beneath his chin.

“Your parole hearing was scheduled,” he began and glanced at a calendar hanging on the wall. “Six weeks from now you’ll be in a courtroom. Your lawyer will plead the case to the judge and then I’ll climb my happy ass up on that stand and swear with God as my witness that you are fit to return to society; that you’ve been under my watch for five years without incident.”

Awash in a torrent of strange emotions—relief, fear, anticipation—Sandor didn’t know how to respond.

“I appreciate the education, but I know the process,” was all he could muster. 

Unimpressed, the warden shook his head with a frustrated chuckle and dug through the desk drawer for his tobacco pipe. Sandor watched and waited as he stuffed the pipe with slow precision. He eyed Sandor and lit a match, puffing until fragrant plumes billowed from his lips. The warden leaned forward with his features as inscrutable as they were stern.

“Let me tell you something. There’s not a goddamn place in this world where misery loves company more than here. Beric and the others, they’ll do whatever they can to derail your chance at freedom. They’ll do it for no other reason than it gives them endless joy to see others in the trenches suffering.”

The warden paused and pointed the pipe’s mouthpiece at Sandor. “Do not give them that satisfaction.”

The man was right. Boros and Beric would try to push Sandor over the edge of no return and relish every bit of that fall. Sandor swallowed hard and nodded.

“Yes, sir,” he mumbled. 

The warden handed over Sansa’s Polaroids and Sandor spared a faint smile as he took the pictures and sheltered them in his palm with dizzying relief.

“Six weeks. All you gotta do is walk the line,” the warden warned, and his voice rose in volume with the gravitas of his message. “One toe out of step and you force me to either lie in court or keep your ass here for another five years. I don’t want to do either. Go on now.”

The warden tipped his head to the open door and Sandor stood, but as he shifted, he felt the cool kiss of the metal utensil still tucked in his waistband. Before he could reach the door, the warden issued another grave warning.

“If you stay here, we’re cutting that hair.”

Sandor halted beneath the doorframe and turned his head over his shoulder, just enough to glimpse the warden’s solemn gaze. 

“I guess I better find a way out then,” Sandor replied, just as solemn and serious, and didn’t linger in the warden’s office long enough to see if the man registered his words as a threat.

Sandor stepped into the hall and the guard retraced the path back through the belly of the building. The promise of freedom grew more distinct with each hall they walked and, by the time the guard led the way into the cell block, the frenzy in Sandor had already begun; the aching and unabated need to get out of this place.

Maybe the warden had been right all along. Sandor never claimed innocence—he should’ve killed that man in Bronn’s bar—but he also never carried the guilt either. Some might’ve said that was the mark of a soulless man, but Sandor didn’t belong here, and this wasn’t how his story would end.

In the cell block, the searches had already ended but, as he neared his cell, Sandor observed Boros slip a pack of cigarettes through the bars and into Beric’s hand. The collusion was clear between them even as their whispers trailed off when Sandor approached.

“I’ll take it from here,” Boros grumbled to the other guard, who gave a curt nod and scurried off.

Beric hovered near the front of the cell. His shoulder pressed against the bars and he packed the cigarettes. Boros stepped to Sandor, who kept his arms behind his back and the pictures hidden between his palms.

“You’ll never leave this place,” Boros spoke with smoldering anger only mildly quelled for now. “I’ll make sure of it, even if it’s the last thing I do.”

“It will be if you try to stop me from getting out,” Sandor threatened with a laugh, though he relished no joy from it. He’d have to bite his tongue and bide his time, but six weeks now seemed an eternity.

Boros hastily unlocked the cell and shoved Sandor inside. He slammed the door shut and shifted his gaze to Beric with a knowing smile. Beric nodded in response before Boros bounded off.

Sandor dug through the books and paperwork on the floor, paying no mind to how Beric watched him. Crouched down, he tore through the mess until he spotted a border of roses peeking from the pile of upended belongings. Sandor plucked free the letter and sat back. He cradled the envelope against his chest and closed his eyes with a heavy sigh of sweet relief that her letter had survived.

“The good Lord is gonna make you pay for your sick defilement of such purity,” Beric warned, self-satisfied with his fraudulent sense of piety.

Sandor pushed himself from the floor and tossed Sansa’s letter and pictures to his bed. He spun to Beric who’d retreated to his bunk. The man made the mistake of turning his back to Sandor who seized the opportunity.

In two quick strides, Sandor closed the distance. He grabbed Beric by the back of his shirt and yanked him from his bunk. Beric barely loosed a squeal. From behind, Sandor wrapped one hand around the man’s throat and the other hand pulled free the spork from his waistband.

Beric gargled and gasped for breaths and, with his back against Sandor’s chest, writhed like wild. Sandor dug the utensil into the socket of Beric’s one good eye.

“You and your good Lord can get fucked, you bible thumping freak,” Sandor growled in Beric’s ear, only loud enough for the man to hear and careful that his voice didn’t echo. “I don’t know what you and bitch boy Boros are planning, but if you ever touch her letters or pictures or ever speak her name again, I’ll carve your eye out of your head. We’ll see how well you fare when you’re blind and thrown to the ass-fucking wolves.”

Just as he felt Beric starting to go limp against him, Sandor released his hold and shoved the man hard across the cell. Beric’s face collided into the metal bed frame and he collapsed to the floor, gasping and clawing at his throat. With his face a moribund shade of violet, Beric gaped at Sandor who loomed over him.

“You’re gonna die here.” Beric could scarcely manage the words. They came on a hoarse rattle and a heaving fit of coughs. He crawled into his bed and curled up in the fetal position facing the wall.

“No, I won’t,” Sandor vowed and dipped to the floor where Beric had dropped his cigarettes.

Sandor upended the pack into the toilet, flushed them down, and pelted Beric with the empty box for good measure.

That night, for perhaps the first time in weeks, Sandor indulged in the cell’s quiet peace. Beric stirred only long enough to pull the bed linens over his head, and Sandor was alone with his thoughts. Most times, the silence left his mind turbulent with memories and lost dreams, the things he could never hope to have.

Tonight, Sandor tucked Sansa’s pictures in the slats above him. He stared up at the Polaroids and let the calm wash over. He marveled at the way this woman he hadn’t met gentled something inside of him. She eased the worries and fears and imparted in him such blissful serenity.

“I’m getting out. One way or another,” he whispered to Sansa Stark.

She was perhaps the only one smiling down at him from up above; a sweet singing little bird who even knew the distance between them and it wasn’t all that far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll probably say this every chapter, but I just thank you all for reading, for the comments, kudos, all of it! It means so much to me and I’m always blown away by how generous folks are in this fandom with showing love and support. It really does warm my heart and it makes me want to run to my computer and write a million more stories to share with you all! 
> 
> I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. Next week’s chapter is one of my favorites! I cannot wait to share it with you! See you then and much love in the mean time.


	5. Time

Through June, a dome of heat berated the Texas plains and the sun-parched earth begged for rain. Only paranoia sunk in, though, when a girl from Devil Creek went missing. The town folk might’ve once pegged her as a runaway fleeing a dead-end life, but the sinister truth spread on whispers up and down the main drag. It drifted from the barbershop to the hardware store, the florist to the salon. Everyone knew.

In neighboring towns, someone preyed on young women. It was only a matter of time before they showed up in Devil Creek. The term “serial killer” held weight, though, and the sheriff carried it along the delicate line of warning the public without inciting panic. It was too late. The town’s secluded safety was shattered, and the sun set with terror in Devil Creek these days.

The town traveled in packs on the sheriff’s good advice. Women shopped in groups. Men patrolled the streets. When wild night rose, folks locked their doors and peered out their windows at all who passed. Unease even drifted in the door at The Iron Kraken on Saturday nights. From the stage, Sansa would observe the stilted patrons and their tight smiles that even liquor couldn’t loosen.

For tonight only, the sheriff lifted the town’s curfew and touted the Fourth of July celebration as the safest place to be. People would come for barbecue and fireworks but stay for protection in numbers.

Sansa walked between Theon and Jeyne down the town’s mostly empty square. A warm breeze kicked up dust and a bright blue sky filtered through the haze of humidity that was sticky against Sansa’s bare arms.

“Fear mongering,” she scoffed at the once thriving town center, now mostly shuttered and not just for Independence Day festivities.

The street was emptied of cars and an unnatural stillness descended. No birds chirped. The cicadas didn’t sing. Nothing; just hollow silence.

They eased down the street towards the record store and Sansa’s white maxi dress whipped around her legs with the wind. She circled around a ladder where Mr. Mormont strung up red, white, and blue bunting to a lamppost while a few others from the hardware store looked on. Theon waltzed beneath the ladder with no mind for tempting fate.

It earned him an annoyed glance from Jeyne. Over the past month, the girl had planted herself in the crosshairs of rampant caution and fearful superstition. It left her perpetually on edge and jumpy. Sansa did her best to ease Jeyne’s frazzled nerves, for all the good it did. The girl accused Sansa of clinging to stubborn resolve, the kind that assumed safety from inexplicable tragedy, but Sansa too laid down with fear as her bedfellow each night.

“I agree with Sansa,” Theon said and held open the record store’s door and Sansa slipped in after Jeyne.

Behind the counter, the owner, George, had planted himself in front of a fan and bobbed his head to the Grateful Dead. The door chimed, and he leapt from his seat with a cigarette dangling between his lips. His bloodshot eyes and the smell wafting through the musty shop suggested he’d been smoking more than just cigarettes to pass the time.

“You agree because it’s bad for business,” Jeyne retorted and tossed a smile over her shoulder at Theon.

Her gaze lingered just long enough for him to notice, but Jeyne retreated behind her timid reserve. Had she not dropped her eyes to her sandals, she might’ve noticed Theon grinning back at her. He ran his fingers through his hair and leaned against the glass counter across from George.

“Shit,” Theon chuckled with wayward amusement at his own misfortune. “The only reason I’m breaking even anymore is the crowd this one brings in on Saturdays.” 

He pointed to Sansa who smiled politely though the compliment wasn’t quite the truth. Even the Saturday crowd had thinned out.

“You’re the only customers I’ve had all day.” George shook his head and ashed his cigarette. He scrutinized the vacant street and scratched his chin beneath the tangled mess of a gray beard. “Sheriff says they’ve got no leads. Damn shame about that girl.”

_Damn shame indeed._

In times like this, Sansa imagined what her momma might say, the advice she’d give. _‘You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, child. Use it but don’t overthink.’_ That was easier said than done. This town offered few distractions in the best of times and even fewer in the perilous.

Sansa began down a row of records, some new and others well-used in their tatty sleeves. Jeyne trailed behind her as Theon talked shop with George, who’d been running the record store for as long as Sansa could remember. Some of her earliest memories were trips here with her father. The place was a novelty and packed to the gills with as much nostalgia as music.

Sansa stopped in front of a collection of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and their contemporaries. Beside her, Jeyne swayed gently back and forth, but kept her eyes downturned.

“I still think you should come with us tonight, Sansa,” Jeyne cajoled and mindlessly thumbed through records. “I can’t imagine why you’d rather stay home.”

Incredulous, Sansa discreetly lifted one brow at Jeyne. The girl’s face bloomed with sudden and sympathetic recognition of the elephant in the room. Though it’d become emaciated in the past year, the wretched thing still existed in shadows.

Last Independence Day, Sansa waited by the riverfront for Joffrey. A band played on the stage and a sea of flags waved as the crowd gathered for the fireworks display. As the sun dipped beneath the horizon, the nauseating pit in Sansa’s stomach had grown.

When the crowd broke, she saw Joffrey with that blonde-haired, green-eyed girl who hung on his arm with all the delirious happiness Sansa had always wished for herself. According to the rumor mill, the girl had landed in town a month prior, fresh blood in the big city.

Joffrey had locked eyes with Sansa. She’d wanted contrition, empathy, anything other than the icy cruelty she’d found. His eyes had gone black with incongruent rage that erupted as soon as he saw her. Sansa had bolted through the crowd and back home as fast as her legs would carry.

On the surface, it looked like she was a woman who’d had her fill of infidelity and broke free. The others didn’t know that Sansa had gotten away with her life that night and had had an entire year to sit with the knowledge. The seasons had changed. Summer faded into autumn that decayed into winter. When spring blossomed and sizzled back into summer once more, those memories waxed again and reached a fever pitch now on the anniversary of her escape.

Guilt ravaged Jeyne’s face, and Sansa gently gripped the girl’s elbow.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured and solidified her subtle declaration with a smile.

Sansa was skeptical, not stupid. She’d hauled out her daddy’s shotgun from beneath the bed. Her skills had grown rusty over the years and Sansa never imagined she’d need the gun but slept easier with it by her bedside.

“Besides, I’m busy tonight.” Sansa continued down the aisle and ran her fingertips across the orderly rows of records.

The deliberate detour towards nonchalance was her tell and, when Sansa raised her eyes, Jeyne sported a conspiratorial grin that said she knew damn well what Sansa meant.

Sansa wrote Sandor every Monday night. With the weekend behind her, Monday nights meant she had stories to tell—the things she did to occupy her time; odd occurrences on her Saturday night gigs; reflective musings on a new week. It worked out well. She had even started writing to him on Thursday nights after Sandor proclaimed that he wanted more of her. Sansa assumed he meant letters, but learned the man relished double meanings and wordplay functioned well enough as foreplay.

“Isn’t there a limit to how many letters you can send one inmate?” Theon chuckled and came up behind Jeyne, who stiffened at his presence.

The girl wore the shortest pair of shorts Sansa had ever seen her in and looked tempted to tug at the bottom, even though her ass was fully covered, though Theon wouldn’t rightly mind if it wasn’t.

“No.” Sansa shook her head and felt her hair sweep against her bare shoulders and back. “It’s not like I write that many. Just two a week.”

She evened out the edges of defensiveness, the part of her that suspected she might be overdoing it. It’d been six weeks, twelve letters. Jeyne wrote her inmate just once a month. Sansa was poised to overtake the girl’s total, but there wasn’t anything to explain. She’d found catharsis in writing to Sandor, and he seemed to enjoy her letters too.

“The town bought double the fireworks this year on account of more people showing up. Sure you don’t wanna come?” Theon coaxed.

“I don’t like fireworks.” 

It was the truth. The noise had wrapped itself around the chaos of her escape from Kansas City. Jeyne frowned and so too did Theon and, with their twin expressions of disappointment, Sansa felt guilt creeping in. _Don’t be a downer._

“I’m sure it will be lovely,” Sansa added with a saccharine smile, artificial in its origin though no less sweet. “Maybe I’ll be able to see them from my backyard.”

Content to let it go for now, Theon nodded, and Jeyne shrugged with graceful albeit solemn acquiescence. They split off towards their respective tastes. Theon headed for the back corner where prog rock met psychedelic holdovers from the last decade. Jeyne perused the extensive selection of country music. Sansa would normally be there too, only abandoning Jeyne’s side when the girl drifted into gospel.

Today, she ventured into uncharted areas a row over from Theon. He regarded her with something between appreciative respect for new musical horizons and suspicion at her presence here.

He had every right to the latter, and Sansa turned away just as the heat hit her cheeks. It’d give her away, but it didn’t have to. She scanned the row of alphabetized records and ultimately ended up next to Theon as the “P” artists stretched around the corner. Sansa flicked through an upright stack of records until she found the one she was looking for—all black with a triangular prism and a ray of light refracted into a rainbow.

“I didn’t take you as a Pink Floyd fan,” Theon commented with a smirk. “Let me guess—Sandor recommended them.”

Sansa’s back stiffened like it did when she was a schoolgirl caught red-handed in troublemaking. Was it that obvious? In times like this, when Theon donned that infuriating and knowing smile or Jeyne fell into contemplative quiet, Sansa could step outside herself and see what others might see—gushing with hands animated and voice lifting in jubilation she’d only recently recovered. Even Sansa heard the way she fit Sandor into the nooks and crannies of conversation.

If someone talked about the trend of avocado kitchen appliances, she’d pipe up with Sandor’s hatred of the color green—OD green, green of the rice paddy fields, any shade of green really. And Lord help anyone who mentioned San Antonio. She’d be quick to relay that that’s where Sandor was from. She might even throw in that he’d moved further north to escape the heat but mostly the humidity.

Her friends blessedly tolerated Sansa’s effusive and emphatic trivia about Sandor Clegane, and Sansa repaid their patience by shutting up about him every so often.

“Perhaps,” was all Sansa said and scooted around Theon. “I figured I’d try something new.”

“I meant to tell you. I remember where I heard his name now,” Theon offered with hesitant reserve and flipped through a stack of records. He’d sworn up and down he knew a Sandor Clegane but couldn’t place the name.

Sansa spun towards him with her stomach in knots. She bit her lip to wipe clean her hopefulness.

“You know he was a bull rider?” Theon glanced at Sansa and shook his head. “A damn good one too. The Hound was what folks called him.”

_The Hound._ Sansa stilled and held the record to her chest. She willed her countenance towards indifference. “No, he never mentioned that. Did you see him ride?”

Theon shook his head.

“I heard about it from Wade. Texas is just one small town; everybody knows someone who knows everybody else. Wade says Sandor shipped off to war just as his star was rising. He didn’t know the bit about Sandor being in prison, just thought he stopped riding because of Vietnam. I’m surprised he didn’t mention it to you. Y’all seem awful close.”

Theon stifled what would’ve been a wicked grin and settled for a wink. Sansa shrugged and wandered away but carried the new bit of knowledge with her. Why wouldn’t Sandor tell her that? Perhaps out of modesty. Then again, he was anything but modest. He wasn’t a braggart either, though. He revealed mostly non-consequential things about himself and left entire parts of his history untouched.

Sansa let it go for now and searched the discount bin where she discovered a few treasures. Afterwards, she settled next to Jeyne, who worked through the gospel section. Sansa leaned against the record stand and stared at the back wall lined with posters. A question warmed her lips, one she’d been too timid—or perhaps too conflicted—to ask.

Eventually, she’d reach the end of her friends’ good graces, the point where they’d have their fill of discussing Sandor, and yet Sansa had avoided the biggest point of discussion and epicenter of her intrigue. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words didn’t come; only a soft noise that caught in her throat. She cleared it away.

Jeyne glanced at Sansa and gave a faint smile as she thumbed through the records. “I feel like you wanna ask me something.”

After a cumbersome silence, Sansa turned to Jeyne.

“Your prisoner,” she started but couldn’t keep the girl’s stare. “Have you two ever talked about meeting?”

“No. He’s down at Texas State Penitentiary. I’m not going all that way. Besides, it’s not like that.”

“Like what?” Sansa pressed, but the implication was already clear as Jeyne circumnavigated the obvious.

The girl abandoned the records and faced Sansa. “I write him letters to provide comfort.”

She left the rest unsaid, whatever it was—a warning, the gentle judgment of a friend—but Sansa wasn’t looking for permission, only precedent and a way to move forward. 

“I think I want to meet Sandor,” Sansa confessed, though she had mostly decided. There wasn’t much left to think about.

Jeyne’s head tilted, and her ponytail draped over her bare shoulder. When she said nothing, Sansa started again to fill the void lest Jeyne or Theon or God himself stuff it full of scrutiny.

“Wichita Falls is only a few hours from here. I bet I wouldn’t even have to miss work. I could do it all in one day.”

Jeyne shook her head and pursed her lips. “I don’t know, Sansa.”

“He’s sent me half a dozen letters and I’ve sent him double that. What’s the harm in going for a visit?”

“What’s the reason in going for a visit?” Jeyne countered, but sweetened the question with the charade of a smile.

“To see him! And for him to see me.” Sansa distracted with the obvious answer to a question Jeyne hadn’t asked. She knew what the girl meant.

“He’s already seen plenty of you.”

There it was. Judgment. Sansa had waited for the other shoe to drop, and Jeyne had certainly been dangling it all these weeks.

Deflated, Sansa stashed her records to the stand, not caring that Pink Floyd and Neil Young didn’t belong with the high and mighty gospel singers. An incensed lump in her throat already burned, her anger not quite a distinct emotion from hurt, and she flounced down the aisle.

“Look, I’m sorry!” Jeyne hollered but lowered her voice when Sansa spun around. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just want you to be safe.”

Plain as day, Sansa discerned the misplaced worry rising in Jeyne. They were all on edge, even George, high as a kite and gazing out the window where the sun must’ve disappeared behind clouds. A shadow fell along the street.

“He’s locked up, Jeyne,” Sansa said and strolled back to her friend. “What exactly do you think he’s gonna do to me? I trust him. I can be honest with him.”

Sansa stood across from Jeyne in the narrow aisle but glanced out the window. “Besides, I’m probably safer with him than in this town with all the weirdos roaming around.”

At least one weirdo had apparently moved on. Sansa hadn’t seen the stranger since he requested _Season of the Witch_ at a gig in May _._ She liked to think her frigid reception of his bizarre request had sent the man out of town. Something told her that probably wasn’t the case.

“Have you told Sandor about Joffrey?” Jeyne asked.

“Some. Not the whole story. Just the part that matters—that I left him last Fourth of July, that he was a monster.” Sansa felt her lips curl in a fond smile and the inclination to gush about Sandor bubbled up. “He said he was proud of me, that I was brave.”

“I know, silly,” Jeyne giggled and nudged Sansa with her elbow. “You called me when that letter came, remember?”

Sansa laughed along and pretended to recall. The truth was that Sandor’s letters often left her breathless and blushing. The things he said barreled past the appropriate but tantalized all the same. He was seasoned in exploring the boundaries, and Sansa was a willing participant in that particular expedition.

Jeyne would’ve been wholly offended and scandalized that a man took such liberties with Sansa. With Jeyne on the phone, Sansa would redact entire portions of Sandor’s letters and only relay what remained—his indulgence in Sansa’s questions or the parts where his suggestive language turned towards the affectionate.

Something must’ve come over Sansa now, the tenderness of daydreams perhaps, and Jeyne relented.

“If you want to meet him, then you should,” she murmured and parted with her judgment in favor of support, even if she couldn’t quite relate or understand. 

Sansa flashed a bright smile. “I’m gonna write him tonight and I’ll ask him then.”

A sudden flush of butterflies besieged her stomach but sent her drifting with her head in the clouds and beaming like a loon.

“If I didn’t know any better, Sansa, I’d say you’re sweet on him,” Jeyne remarked and shooed Sansa down the aisle and towards the counter where Theon paid for his stack of records.

“Being sweet” implied pure innocence and chastity. But chaste girls didn’t go wet between the legs and indulge in that ache with thoughts of men like Sandor and all the promises he’d been making in so many words to her. She was more than sweet on him, and he was more than just intriguing.

Sansa stashed the thought away long enough to pay for her records and waited for Jeyne to do the same. They said their farewells to George and rambled down the street. Mr. Mormont and the others had finished with the bunting. With not another soul in sight, the eeriness only further infested the square.

“This place is a ghost town,” Theon commented and, though he said it with a smile, he scrutinized the empty road as he unlocked his car. He held the passenger door open for Jeyne and the back door for Sansa.

As Theon navigated the streets back to Sansa’s house, attempts at light conversation waned to uneasy silence. The short drive and handful of turns stretched on and Sansa gazed out the window, finding Theon’s observation just a little too apt.

For a balmy summer day, backyards went empty. No children played in the local park. No one was out for a stroll or a bike ride. If she didn’t know any better, Sansa would’ve said they were the last souls on earth.

When Theon’s Trans Am rumbled to a stop in front of Sansa’s house, she scooted forward and planted a kiss on Theon and Jeyne’s cheeks.

“Be safe tonight and lock your doors,” Jeyne urged with that worried look again. “I’ll call you later.”

“You two have fun,” Sansa said and climbed from the car. She jogged up the driveway to her front door, aware of the engine idling as Theon and Jeyne watched her get safely inside.

With her back against the door, Sansa dropped her purse and shopping bag to the floor, closed her eyes, and drew a deep breath. She hadn’t strayed from home all that long, but still relished the coming back and the quiet respite of the evening ahead. She slid out of her platform sandals, locked up the house, and poured a glass of iced tea.

From their sacred place in her bedside drawer, Sansa retrieved the small stack of Sandor’s letters. He wasn’t the only one who laid awake some nights, thinking over their conversations and the words exchanged between them that’d evolved over time. Sometimes when she couldn’t sleep, Sansa pulled out his letters and read them again, wondering what his voice might sound like or how his body would feel against hers.

Sansa slipped back down the hall to the record player in the living room where she sunk to the floor and studied the envelopes in her hands. Sandor wrote less often than Sansa and not because he wouldn’t have written more if he could. What they lacked in frequency, his letters made up for in content that left Sansa with that flutter in her belly no matter how many times she read them.

She abandoned the letters long enough to drop the needle on her new record. On the floor and propped up on the heels of her hands, Sansa eased back and closed her eyes. She soaked in the music; the strange but enticing tones that sent her drifting on a calm sea. Her breaths came slow and even, and the tension in her limbs fled as she laid down on the plush carpet. From the stack of envelopes, Sansa plucked out Sandor’s second letter to her.

They were all special in their own way and contained something that moved her and Sandor down the road towards an unknown horizon. Where the mystery of that journey might’ve once scared her, it now left her enthralled.

In his second letter, Sandor had called her little bird for the first time—apparently something to do with her singing—but had once implied there was more to the nickname. Sansa didn’t know what.

All she really knew is that she liked it—his pet name for her; the compliments that were bold but lacked the distinct look and feel of bullshit; the clever suggestiveness of his words and the undercurrent of growing fondness.

In what Sansa could tell was a rare expression of outright affection, Sandor had divulged that her letters were often what kept him sane and her words ran through his mind at night, the hardest times for him. And where mail call had once been a source of annoyance and misery, he now regarded it with joy in an otherwise bleak existence.

What he might not have known, and what Sansa ultimately told him, was that he too had become the bright spot in her weeks filled with monotony; day after day, the same existence that she struggled to find much meaning in. And she might’ve been content if she had this life to share with someone but, as it stood, she was alone. With every story of another missing girl or tragedy in the next town over, the concerned town folk reminded Sansa that she didn’t have a man at home to protect her.

_I’ll just have to protect myself._

She sat up and stared at the front door and the living room window where the curtains remained shut. Summer splendor deceived with sultry nights where the air smelled sweet, but something ominous lurked in the darkness.

As one song bled into the next, Sansa read through Sandor’s letter. The folds had worn deeper with each read and the paper was slightly tattered too. 

_Little Bird,_

_The nickname seems fitting given your apparent love of singing. I expect you to tell me if you take offense to it. Then again, there’s plenty you might’ve taken offense to in my first letter and you still wrote me back. That must count for something, especially since you already consider me a friend. I’ll try to live up to the distinction._

_Sounds like you dodged a bullet with your fiancé. Add that to the list of things to be proud of. Since you’re a good Texas girl, all that pride isn’t apt to go to your head, though I’d say you’re well within your rights if it did._

_I had my share of women both before and after the war, but none are waiting for me. If one of them were, I can’t imagine she’d appreciate the things I do when I think about you._

_Thank you for indulging me with another picture. Nice dress. I see why it’s your favorite. It’s my favorite too and I imagine the only thing that would look better on you is nothing at all._

_I suppose you hear how pretty you are from plenty and don’t need another voice in that choir. I don’t rightly give a fuck about that and will say what bears repeating—you’re beautiful._

_Since you offered honesty in your last letter, I’ll offer some too—my thoughts of you aren’t exactly pure. I’m not wondering what it might be like to go on a picnic with you, but I sure do think of other things we might do in the great outdoors on a blanket. I’ll let you fill in the rest until I can fill it in for you._

_I don’t have a picture to send. I’m not a looker like you are, but where my face ain’t much, I make up for it in height and strength and a few other important ways too._

_I’ll tell you something else. Yours was the first letter I ever received here, and it was a bright spot in a whole lot of darkness. There won’t come a day where I consider a letter from you a burden and not a blessing. And that’s all I’ll say about that._

_I look forward to hearing from you again._

_Sandor_

Sansa held the letter to her chest, careful not to wrinkle the paper. His words resonated almost tangible, as if she could feel the weight of them against her skin, breathe them in, taste them on her lips, everything short of manifesting him in the room.

The phone wailed from the kitchen and broke Sansa from her daydream. She yelped with a startle and killed the record as she pushed herself from the floor. When she rounded the corner into the kitchen, Sansa pulled the receiver from its cradle.

“Hi Jeyne.” Still riding the high from Sandor’s letter, she chirped merrily into the line and leaned against the wall. 

Sansa’s presumptive greeting was met with a quiet intake of breath, undeniably masculine and unmistakably _not_ Jeyne.

“Who’s Jeyne?” A deep voice as dark as distant thunder rumbled through the line.

Sansa peeled away from the wall and wrapped her finger around the phone cord with nervous vexation. Her hands shook and voice trembled.

“Who is this?”

The wild thrum of her heartbeat had little to do with receiving another mysterious call. Anticipation coursed through her as Sansa waited for a reply. _Could it be?_

“I knew your voice was sweet, little bird.”

Another rumble and it felt like being submerged in warm water. Goosebumps laid siege to her skin and Sansa felt her lips part, but the chasm between her mind and mouth grew and she scrambled for something to say.

“S-Sandor?” she stammered and gripped the receiver with both hands. “Is it really you?”

“Well, it sure as hell isn’t Jeyne,” he laughed.

With the sharp shock of the unexpected wearing off, Sansa memorized the tone and cadence of his voice with its subtle San Antonio twang and a close match to all she’d imagined. The familiarity left her reeling. 

Questions blazed across Sansa’s mind in rapid fire succession—how did he get her number? How long did he have to talk? Did he receive her last letter?

“How are you?” was the only question Sansa managed. She nearly collapsed into the kitchen chair, still flustered and afflicted with timid reticence that left her weak-kneed and barely breathing. 

“Better now,” Sandor said. His deep timbre was ripped from a dream—husky, low, and commanding. “They don’t give us much phone time, but I thought I’d surprise you today. Hope you don’t mind.” 

Sansa sat up straight with the fear that she’d been impolite. Or perhaps he was second guessing himself. That alone inspired the sweetness she infused into her voice because what he couldn’t see now was how she smiled, dumfounded and wholly mesmerized by him.

“I don’t mind at all!” Sansa proclaimed just a little too loud and, though she quieted her voice, it still came sodden with exuberance. “This is a very pleasant surprise.”

On the other end, she heard Sandor release a soft breath, something like a sigh. “Good. It’s Independence Day. What are you doing at home?”

“Nothing much,” Sansa shrugged and stood from the table. She paced the room with the telephone cord stretching behind her. “I’m celebrating my own independence today.”

“I remember. You left Kansas City a year ago.”

_He remembered._ Sansa’s heart raced again, and her hands still trembled as she stared out the sliding glass door to her backyard that’d been freshly mowed a week ago.

It was her turn to talk but, tongue-tied and suddenly shy, every word she had for this man failed her now and fled the room when she needed them the most. She settled for the truth, not bothering with something clever to say. She’d only bungle it.

“I’m sorry if I sound rude.” Sansa exhaled a heavy breath and anxious laugh. “I just can’t believe you’re calling me! It’s good to hear your voice after all this time. It’s like a dream.”

Sandor chuckled. “I admire your definition of a dream.”

“Well, it feels good to be admired, so I’ll take it.” Sansa smiled at finally finding the right rhythm of conversation and paying him more than just bewildered silence.

“I’m sure I could find more of you to admire in ways that feel just as good,” Sandor replied, his rhetoric as free and unabashed now as it was in his letters. “You don’t sound rude, just nervous.”

“Nervous, yes, but the rest of it is happiness.” Sansa rested with one hip against the kitchen counter and the phone cord wrapped around her waist.

“Nervous happiness,” Sandor repeated slowly. “That’s quite the combination. I think some might call that anticipation.”

Sansa discerned stray bits of relief in his voice. He didn’t let on much in the way he spoke but, if she listened close enough, the nuance was there.

“There’s plenty of that too.” Sansa felt the heat surface on her cheeks and, if Sandor latched onto the coy suggestion, Sansa wouldn’t have known. She continued before he could speak again. “Guess what I bought today?”

A deep resonant hum drifted through the line, and that wobbly feeling and pleasured buzz rippled through Sansa again. “Another dress like that green one?” 

They laughed in unison at the suggestion, and Sansa marveled at the way it sounded together, quite the duet.

“No. I bought a record. That Pink Floyd one you suggested.”

With a graceful spin, she untangled herself from the telephone cord.

“No shit?” He sounded happy now, as if he were grinning into the phone.

Sansa often wondered what he looked like when he smiled and imagined he didn’t spare much outward joy but hoped he might with her.

“I’ve been listening to it! My favorite so far is the clock song.”

“The clock song,” he repeated with another chuckle. The fondness seeped through; for her or the music, she wasn’t quite sure. “That’s my favorite too.”

Sansa leaned against the archway leading to the living room, gazing at the letters on the floor and the empty record sleeve.

“I wish you could be here to listen to it with me.” The flutter in her belly morphed into an ache in her chest.

“You and me both,” Sandor sighed, and Sansa swore she heard the same longing in him too. “Although, I reckon I’d rather hear you sing.”

“What would you want to hear?” she asked tenderly.

On Saturday nights, up on stage singing to the lonely cowboys, Sansa pretended Sandor was in the crowd. She’d envision him perched against the far wall and with a hat obscuring his face as he watched and listened. With that fantasy, Sansa would sing her heart out.

Sandor released a quiet laugh into the line. “Not a song like you’re thinking, but I’d find a way to make you sing for me.”

“I’d sing for you gladly.” Sansa gnawed her bottom lip, not entirely sure anymore what song he was referring to and supposed it didn’t quite matter. Any song he wanted, she’d give it to him.

“If I had more time and more privacy, I’d make you sing for me now,” Sandor murmured with strained frustration, his voice almost akin to a groan.

She knew now the song he wanted. The heat spread down Sansa’s chest now faintly heaving with quickened breaths. “You’re making me blush.”

That was an understatement. Sansa eyed the morning paper on the table, anything she could fan herself with, and swore the room was on fire for how she was burning alive in her own skin. And what a gorgeous heat it was.

“I better be doing more than just making you blush.” Sandor’s words came hushed now and more serious too. 

“Oh, you are,” Sansa breathed into the line with a familiar pulse at the juncture of her thighs and the desire to be touched there. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“If I was there, I’d figure it out for myself. Maybe I’d spend all evening exploring every part of you.”

The deep and slow drawl of his voice allured and teased with splendid torture that sent Sansa back into the chair.

“I’d love that,” she said in quiet confession to him.

“Yes, you would.” It sounded half a threat and half a promise, and both left Sansa equally enthralled. So too did his laugh, fully satisfied with explicit knowledge of the unrevealed. “I bet a man’s never talked to you like this before.”

“There’s plenty a man has never made me feel before that I’m sure you could. Or that you already have,” Sansa replied without missing a beat and it wasn’t meant to placate. It was the truth.

No man had ever made Sansa feel the way Sandor had. If Sansa strayed too far off the pedestal of propriety, there’d be a man there to warn her that a good Texas girl brought up with Jesus on her lips should mind her place. But curiosity beckoned for a taste of what existed beyond those boundaries. Sandor had been the only man to lure her to the edge rather than shove her back into the confines of a pageant queen and small-town darling. With him, that liberation felt natural, not sinful, and she wanted more.

With a pause on the line, the heat fled Sansa’s body and an icy chill rippled down her spine with the thought she might’ve offended him. When his voice came again, Sansa understood with crystalline clarity the change in the wind where his devilish tenor turned towards amorous affection.

“You’re sweet, Sansa Stark. You know that?”

He sounded like he was smiling again, and his words dawdled with doting admiration as if drawn out to relish the sentiment behind them.

“I’ll always be sweet to you,” Sansa said and, once more, matched him in the meaning behind her words. “All I ask is that you make it easy on me.”

“It’s a deal. I think I’m getting the better bargain, but I have ways to uphold my end of it.”

A small uproar punctuated the line with rowdy shouts and raucous laughter. The interruption served as a crude reminder that, as much as they had slipped into another world with one another, Sandor’s time was not his own and an urgency set in with the question burning on her tongue now.

“Sandor, there’s something I want to ask you,” Sansa began haltingly and twirled the phone cord around her finger again. “I was gonna put it in a letter, but I’d rather ask you now.”

“I’m listening, little bird.”

There it was again—the affection finding its way and easing a path for Sansa to speak freely as she paced the kitchen floor once more.

“I’ve been thinking it over and I know we’ve only been writing to each other for a little over a month but I feel like we’ve gotten to know each other and I only live a few hours from you so I wouldn’t mind at all making the drive if it meant I got to see you and finally put a face to the man I’ve been writing to and now to your voice too, which is very nice; I should have said so in the beginning.”

When she finished, Sansa gulped down a breath, slightly dizzy and embarrassed for having rambled on. Broaching the topic in a letter would’ve bought her some grace but not the benefit of an instant answer. Sansa was more than willing to sacrifice poise as she waited for an answer or any sign that he’d heard.

Only silence came through the line.

“So, what do you think if I came to visit you?” Sansa asked again when Sandor had said nothing.

The pause wore on.

“Sandor? Hello?”

Sansa pulled the phone away and stared at it as if that might materialize something. When nothing came, she pressed it to her ear again. “Are you there?”

The phone tolled with a dead line. The call’s abrupt end came with burgeoning disappointment and Sansa hung up the phone with a storm of confusion clouding her thoughts.

Surely, he wouldn’t have taken offense to her suggestion that they meet. Of course, he wouldn’t. From what Sansa knew of him, Sandor lacked the mercurial volatility that afflicted her relationship with Joffrey, whose moods shifted like a storm-battered sea, whipping Sansa about and leaving her sick to her stomach.

_He’s not that,_ Sansa assured herself and settled on the most obvious explanation instead of tying her heart up in knots with the twists and turns of an unlikely scenario. He simply ran out of phone time and didn’t have even a moment to answer or say goodbye.

Despite the call’s unceremonious end, Sansa floated back into the living room, waiting for the moment her feet might hit the ground again. A dream, it all felt a dream—beautiful and gossamer at the edges. Her thoughts of him burst with sonic vividness, the shades brightening from the black and white of his letters to vibrant color now.

Sprawled out on the floor in front of the record player, Sansa read through his letters twice with the backdrop of Waylon Jennings and Sandor’s voice now narrating the words. The combination was fitting.

The sun had set when Sansa finally peeled herself from the floor and scrounged up a meager meal of leftovers from the fridge. When she finished eating and cleaned up the kitchen, Sansa drew all the curtains shut and checked the locks on the windows and doors.

Somewhere in the distance, fireworks popped, and Sansa imagined Jeyne and Theon together and maybe one of them had mustered up the courage to slip their hand in the other’s. Perhaps they might even share their first kiss beneath glittering red, white, and blue in the sky.

The romance of the day wasn’t lost on Sansa, though she mostly associated the holiday with horror. The sweet surprise of Sandor’s call remained as she drew a warm bath with fragrant bubbles and even lit enough candles that, when she killed the light, the bathroom held a dull glow.

Sansa shed her clothes and, where she normally didn’t linger long in front of the mirror, she stood before it now and took in full sight of herself—bare breasts with pink buds for nipples; the slope of her waist and hips; her body slender but feminine in its curves. More of Sandor’s words to her flooded Sansa’s mind.

_“It’s like you were torn from some of the only good dreams I have.”_

She abandoned the mirror and dipped a toe into the tub where she eased slowly into the water. It was a warm embrace against her bare skin. Sansa laid back and rested her head against the back of the tub. In the absence of music or the television murmuring in the background, she surrendered herself to the silence and the thoughts of Sandor swept in.

She’d been forced to paint a picture of him with the details he’d given—black hair kept long because that’s how he liked it; gray eyes and what had to be masculine features because God didn’t give a rumbling voice like Sandor’s to the effeminate; tall enough that he almost had to dip his head in most doorways; and strong because he’d always been inclined to muscle mass, but prison offered no excuse for not staying in shape.

Where Sandor seemed at least marginally worried that Sansa was building castles in the sky over him, she thought there was something to be said for the mystery of it all. Though her visions of him were still largely shrouded in shadows, the slow, sensory revelation of one another meant that they savored every new detail.

_“I lay awake some nights grappling with the stroke of sheer luck that a woman like you would take such interest in me.”_

Sansa ran a palm up her stomach, and her fingertips brushed over one nipple. If she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend it was his touch. When she pushed her breasts out of the water, she could imagine the lingering wetness was similar to his tongue swirling over each nipple. It had been longer than a year since a man had touched her, a fact she hadn’t quite admitted to Sandor, but he seemed to piece together.

_“Those nights, I think of you; the ways I might touch you, where my lips would end up on your body, all the pretty ways you’d respond, every sound from your mouth.”_

Sansa’s hand at her breast disappeared beneath the water and trailed down her belly. Her middle finger swiped gently between her legs, spreading her lips and stroking her clit in the tender way his tongue might, and she imagined he’d savor that too, the way she tasted and responded to his kisses and licks between her legs.

She dipped one finger inside of herself and released a breathy moan as a second finger slipped in. Sansa licked her bottom lip as she slowly eased her fingers in and just as slowly out. Her legs spread as far as the bathtub would allow, and she writhed against her own touch.

She wanted his weight on top of her, his hardness inside her just like this, slowly at first, feeling every bit of his length. He’d consume her, Sansa knew. He’d want every inch of her—his lips at her neck, hands at her breasts, the ends of his hair sweeping against her skin.

Sansa bucked her hips and her panting breaths filled the bathroom in faint echoes. Her brow was damp from sweat and steam. Her free hand joined the other, circling her clit in tight, quick swipes as she imagined riding him. He’d grip her waist and command her movements. With her head thrown back, she’d surrender control to him. Anything he wanted, he could have it all.

Sansa’s eyes squeezed shut and her head rolled back. She traced the sound of his voice, the deep rumble she’d memorized, and extrapolated it to the sound of his lovemaking—the way he’d moan and breathe her name as he came hard. Sansa’s pace quickened, chest rising and falling with soft gasps, and her pleasure coming fast upon her. When it broke, it blinded, and Sansa rode that wave with his name a sigh from her lips.

_“You intrigue me, little bird. What a rare find you are. You’re good—sweet and kind—but bad in the best way because I know you must think of me and I’m sure by now it inspires in you what it does in me.”_

Sansa opened her eyes, and as the ecstasy dissolved away, the spell was broken. Sandor seemed further than the distance she’d once measured between them. She wrapped her arms around herself and her cheek rested against her shoulder in a lonely embrace. The silence no longer comforted. _I wish Sandor were here._

She eyed the bathroom doorway and visualized his height beneath its frame, the way he might look at her now, curled up in the water and wanting him near. The lonesome thought sent Sansa out of the tub, though the water was still plenty warm, and the bubbles hadn’t dissipated yet. Wrapped in a towel, she emptied the tub, blew out the candles, and readied herself for bed.

The fireworks had slowed with the festivities drawing to a close, and Sansa thought it was just as well. She slipped into her nightgown and crawled into bed. With a pillow clutched to her chest and hair fanned out behind her, Sandor’s invisible presence followed her here too.

_“I think of you often along with whatever it is that’s grown between us.”_

Maybe he’d hold her and stroke her hair, and she wondered what it might be like to fall asleep in his arms. The sweet thought delivered her into slumber for a few hours. At some point, Sansa surfaced in the twilight of sleep, losing and gaining shades of consciousness as her surroundings slipped in and out of focus. The phone blared from the kitchen with shrill urgency, louder and coarser in the dead of night.

Sansa shot up from beneath the covers and her hand fumbled for the bedside lamp. She flicked on the light and squinted against the invading brightness. With another ring, Sansa hurried out of bed and down the hall to the kitchen.

On the third ring, she caught sight of the clock—a quarter after midnight.

A fourth ring.

This wasn’t a misdialed call or a prank. In the groggy haze of sleep, her mind grappled with who would call this late. Arya. Maybe her sister was in some kind of trouble, but the girl had a million friends and had never met a stranger in her life. Jon. But the war was long over and the danger he’d found himself in was years behind. Jeyne. She’d never called earlier like she was supposed to.

A fifth ring.

Sandor! Maybe he’d found the way and the will to call her back. Her heart strummed a frantic rhythm despite the realization that there was no way in hell an inmate would be allowed to place calls at this hour.

On the sixth ring, Sansa reached the kitchen short of breath and her hands shaking as she picked up the phone.

“Hello,” she croaked on a voice hoarse from sleep.

No one spoke. Only a puff of breath rustled through the line and snapped Sansa awake. Her blood ran cold. Small though it was, she knew that sound in all its horrid and skin-crawling simplicity.

“Who is this? What do you want?” she demanded and didn’t expect a response, but when it came her legs crumbled and she collapsed into the chair next to her.

“Still think this is fear mongering?” the voice—mechanical and manipulated, hardly human—crackled through the line.

With a sharp gasp, the phone plummeted to the floor. A plastic piece broke off the receiver and skid across the yellow, patterned linoleum. Sansa ducked to the floor as her mind blurred with muddled thoughts. Who was on the street? Who could’ve possibly heard her? Remember. Remember. Remember. Who was there?

Sansa snatched up the phone, only now registering the tears that wet her cheeks. “Who are you?”

An eternity passed. With her eyes steady on the kitchen clock, the seconds ticked agonizing and slow. It taunted her just as much as the sudden silence on the other end of the line. The breath returned, but this time soft and sickening. 

“Soon.”

The line went dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading and for all the lovely comments, kudos, subscriptions, and bookmarks! I’m so grateful for it and I’m happy folks are enjoying this fic! Hopefully, it brightens your Tuesdays in these very strange times. See you next week for the next installment! In the meantime, stay safe and take care of yourself. Much love!


	6. Knockin' On Heaven's Door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Some depictions of violence.

The hall quieted from the unwelcome outburst. Two inmates scuffled, and a guard laughed. The commotion infiltrated the small room where Sandor hunched over a table too short for his hulking frame. The rickety thing wobbled on a metal base.

With his back to the door, his skin crawled and the hair on his arms stood on end. The guard loitered outside, as if that paltry distance should suffice as privacy. Every word Sandor said was privy to prying ears. Pry they did, and in search of something that could be used against him later.

Part of Sandor didn’t care if the guard heard how he spoke to Sansa. Sweet as can fucking be, her dulcet voice sent him closer to heaven than any living creature could get without crossing the great divide. The sultry edge to all the soft tones encapsulated what he knew about her already—a good, faithful woman who loved just as passionately as she probably fucked, eager to please and easy to love.

The other part of Sandor recognized the sanctity of this conversation and loathed that anyone here knew about her. Sansa Stark didn’t belong in a place like this, even if her presence only manifested on others speaking her name or seeing her face in photographs. That alone threatened to send Sandor over the edge, and the mistake he’d made had been in showing that hand. Misery reigned supreme in these walls and some here would weaponize that knowledge.

With the phone pressed to his ear, Sandor scooted closer to the table. A smile creased his lips as he listened to Sansa talk with renewed nervousness. She’d gotten herself tongue-tied and twisted and Sandor found it wholly endearing. She spoke now in one long sentence about coming to see him and barely took a breath until the very end.

“I only live a few hours from you so I wouldn’t mind at all making the drive if it meant I got to see you and finally put a face to the man I’ve been writing to and now to your voice too, which is very nice; I should have said so in the beginning.”

Sandor hadn’t smoked in years. A decade, even. Longer than he could remember. This feeling now—floating out of his body, smiling like a fucking lovelorn idiot, and twisted up in his own right over the woman on the other end of the line—he likened to getting high. Sandor eased back in the chair. He lifted the arm crossed over his middle and rested it behind his head.

“You don’t owe me any compliments. The biggest one you’ve paid me is right now. Of course, I want to see you.”

When he was a younger man, he might’ve turned her away to preempt judgement at the thorough wreck that was his face. Older, wiser, and less inclined to giving a shit, he’d gotten better about fussing over his scars. They’d itch and twitch whenever he thought about them too long or worried what others might think.

He’d learned to cast those concerns aside. There wasn’t shit he could do about them other than manage his own self-consciousness. He accomplished that feat during the war. Sandor had seen too many mangled bodies or soldiers heading home short a few limbs. He counted his blessings and shut the fuck up about his scars because some poor bastard in the world had it worse.

He waited, but the line fell quiet. Perhaps Sansa was gathering her composure again. She’d spun herself up into a flustered and entirely enticing tizzy, and now Sandor waited for her to come back down again.

But nothing came; not even the alluring little sighs she made that he’d take back to his bunk later. He’d overlay those sounds with visions of her writhing beneath him, moaning and gasping and begging for more.

“Sansa?”

When she didn’t answer, Sandor sat up straight and leaned against the table. The guard hadn’t given a two-minute warning, but the line held only dead silence, not even a toll of a hung-up call. Sandor twitched at the presence of someone lurking close behind him.

He spun around in the chair and found Boros leaned against the wall right above the phone jack. In his grubby hand, he held the disconnected phone cord and twirled it in circles with a shit-eating grin.

“Time’s up,” Boros taunted with smug self-satisfaction gleaming in his beady black eyes. “Hope you weren’t getting to the good part.”

Sandor observed the expectant glee on the man’s chubby face. Boros clearly anticipated getting the better of Sandor. His jabs functioned like stones tossed at a worn-out monolith and Boros waited for Sandor to crumble from the relentless assault.

It wouldn’t happen today.

Sandor huffed a derisive laugh and slowly stood. He shoved the chair hard and relished the way Boros flinched as it slammed into the table. Where normally Sandor might’ve counted this as yet another annoyance in his run-ins with Boros, today the anger came hard knowing that Sansa Stark was in Devil Creek waiting for an answer to her question.

“I see you didn’t bother to spare a two-minute warning,” Sandor rumbled but capped the volume of his voice. It filled the small room anyhow.

“Not for you.” Boros shook his head but backed away in a shuffled step as Sandor closed the distance between them.

He approached Boros but knew if he came any closer, the man and his cohorts would take it as an invitation for a beating. They’d say he asked for it to justify three or more armed guards beating him senseless. 

They were no better than some men here. In some ways, they were worse; thugs granted the power and means to brutalize in the name of order. As it stood, Sandor had a point to make, so he pushed the line as far as he could. That meant looming just a foot away from Boros. Sandor let his gaze close the rest of that distance with a scowl on his lips and a searing look that could catch fire and burn a hole right through Boros.

“I suppose it’s too much to ask a back-country inbred like you to read a clock,” Sandor sneered.

For a moment, Boros looked rightfully overcome with fear, but must’ve quickly remembered the upper hand. His incipient cowardice fled behind a facade of bravado. He patted the billy club hanging from his hip and his mouth split with a smile.

“Careful now. We wouldn’t want news to travel to your parole board that you’ve been making trouble.” Boros stepped to Sandor and lifted his chin, perhaps to feign height and bravery now. “Or maybe I should enlighten them anyhow. What do you think about that?”

Menacing laughter poured from Boros’s crooked mouth and crimson flooded his fleshy cheeks. Week after week, the man had dangled this over Sandor’s head. The omnipresent threat grew and gained traction. Other guards had written Sandor off as straddling the divide to freedom, one foot in this world and one foot out. Boros seemed in denial and promised that he’d watch Sandor sabotage his chance at freedom.

Still, Sandor couldn’t quite help himself and got his digs in where he could. He nodded with deliberate and dawdling ease and sized Boros up. There wasn’t much to the man who was almost as wide as he was tall.

“I think that would require you to do your job for once,” Sandor sniped with a snide smirk. “I won’t hold my breath.”

If Boros’s face was red before, it looked almost purple now. The rare shade of anger warned that Sandor was close to the precipice and could back off now. He reminded himself that in this battle of wills, there would always be one winner who came out on top and it wouldn’t be him. It was the way the scales of justice worked around here.

“I’ve had enough of you!” Boros seethed through gritted teeth. Spittle flew out one edge of his mouth. “Get the fuck out of here!”

Boros shot one furious finger towards the door. On the way out, Sandor winked at the man and retreated into the hall where another guard escorted him back to his cell. Along the way, inmates hooped and hollered as Sandor passed.

He supposed it came with the territory. His freedom was on the horizon and the warden had the right of it. Misery loved company and word spread like wildfire. Men who Sandor scarcely knew had heard about his parole hearing. They hassled him for details. They taunted him about it. A few even wanted the name of his lawyer. One day, Sandor was apt to disappear, bunk emptied and desk cleared. The others didn’t know when that day might come, so they treated Sandor as if every day might be his last.

He had no friends here. For the few he tolerated, Sandor still had to read into passing pleasantries for them to resemble a friend. The rest took their shots where they could and, for some of them, right now must’ve been that moment. A few hung from the bars at the front of their cell with everything from mischief to pure hatred in their eyes.

_Any day now._

He held fast to those three words. The anticipation that the promise of freedom brought took on a feral quality, like a restless animal pacing a cage.

His parole hearing was done. Sandor’s lawyer supplicated the judge and the warden and Griff spoke on his behalf. Both men said a great many things that bore shades of truth, though some colors were truer than others. No outright lies, though—Sandor was honest; a soldier who’d done his duty and served his country during the worst years of the war; he worked hard and would live a simple life. He hadn’t broken the law before and didn’t intend to again.

As Sandor understood it, the judgment would come down as soon as the board got off their asses and talked it over. If the system wasn’t broken, then it sure as hell was slow as molasses in the dead of winter. The silver lining—the judge seemed keen on granting Sandor’s parole, and Griff was certain that counted as a victory by any other name.

Where that bit of insight might’ve sent him prematurely packing up his belongings, Sandor knew better than to hang his hopes on it. He wasn’t a superstitious man but tempting fate in the eleventh hour felt awfully dangerous. He didn’t speak of his parole and wouldn’t until it was a sure thing. He hadn’t even mentioned it to Sansa; something about putting it in writing and having it ripped away felt unusually cruel, and he knew enough of this world to understand it wasn’t all that kind, and certainly not to men like him.

Back in his cell, Beric perched against his bunk with the Bible in his hands. The work bell would soon ring, signaling an end to their miniscule free time. Sandor’s size and strength meant he was assigned hard labor, the back-breaking work that men with weaker temperaments couldn’t handle. Those men got sent to the kitchen to bake cookies while Sandor nearly broke his body out in the heat, hauling scrap metal to patch up holes in the fences or digging out concrete to repave roads. 

With little time left before work, he disregarded Beric’s gaze as it followed him. His focus remained unwavering and singular, eclipsing everything else that might’ve drawn his attention away from the task at hand.

At his desk, Sandor even ignored the muscles in his back protesting yet another awkward position he sat in. He didn’t give a fuck about Beric or his back as he retrieved blank paper and a fresh golf pencil.

He wrote more haphazardly than usual. His thoughts were less deliberate, and his handwriting was rough. The letter was shorter too, only long enough to explain the abrupt end to their phone call and assure Sansa that he wanted nothing so much as to see her. The thought of being face-to-face with her stilled his movements, and Sandor dropped the pencil to the desk.

He’d give the notion only passive entertainment and usually dismissed it as a pipe dream. Sansa was a nice girl, but he’d debated if her good graces extended from Devil Creek to Wichita Falls. The ideal outcome was Sansa suggesting it herself, without him prompting, cajoling, or flat-out asking, though he eventually would have.

With a faint smile tracing his lips, Sandor indulged the urge to read her letters and the sweet words she’d been paying him twice a week. He had the luxury of her voice now, the sound of his name on her mouth, and the captivating nuance in the way she spoke.

Her courtesies had waned too, but not for the ruse being up. Instead, Sansa shed a layer of shy reserve that asked polite questions and kept the tenor of discussion in the realm of the appropriate. Beneath that reserve and mask of polished manners, Sandor usually found the worst parts of people. Sansa was different and possessed a wealth of intriguing complexities.

With most women, he didn’t bother excavating the layers. He got what he needed from them in trysts that felt more transactional than intimate. He didn’t care about their family, what they did for a living, or if their boss was an asshole or not. He didn’t give a shit about their hopes or dreams. And they didn’t give a shit about him either. Only a few women had ever held his fascination long enough to plumb the depths, but the enchantment eventually wore off. He’d either find them rotten at the core or the relationship would run its course.

With Sansa, the ineffable existed in her letters. He struggled to place it and hoped it’d reveal itself if they ever met. She left more on the page than just pretty words and enthralling details of herself. One thing he knew for certain—kind and compassionate strength prevailed in her. Funny thing, she never boasted about it, but Sandor had pieced together the mystery of this girl who fascinated in unexpected ways. For the parts that remained missing, he wanted more and sensed they’d soon reach the bounds of their correspondences. Eventually, certain things could only be revealed in person.

Sandor dug through the papers on his desk. He flipped through parole paperwork and the few books he had to his name but hadn’t yet read. Notably absent were the letters from their usual place in the back corner. He’d remember if he’d moved them. Of course, he would. He wasn’t prone to forgetting something as significant as Sansa’s letters.

He retraced his search in the same spots. Once, then twice. With rising panic, he tore through the papers. His hands trembled, and he wracked his brain at where he might’ve misplaced them.

The faint smell of cigarette smoke wafted towards him, innocuous at first, but then the horror sunk in.

Sandor turned to Beric who perched against the wall. He’d ditched his Bible for a cigarette and matched Sandor’s eyes as he took a long drag.

Sandor flew from his seat and bound the scant distance across the cell. Beric didn’t flinch, only smirked in that same sickening and knowing way that Boros did. Sandor grabbed Beric by the front of his shirt and shoved him hard against the cinderblock wall.

“You son of a bitch! Where are they?”

Sandor didn’t care how loud he was or that his voice echoed through the cell block. The inmates in surrounding cells cheered and pounded on the bars in a rising and bellicose cacophony. Pressed against the wall, Beric spared enough breath for a quiet laugh but saved the rest to blow smoke in Sandor’s face.

He dumped Beric to the floor where the man broke with maniacal laughter. It rose above the savage howls that ripped through the cell block now with blood lust bursting at the seams.

Sandor shook his head. It was a bluff, a ruse. Beric wasn’t so fucking stupid to have pawned off Sansa’s letters for a pack of smokes. This was just another jab, a way to pull Sandor down into the depths. Beric didn’t need to. Sandor eagerly descended into rage, riding right into that fire as soon as he toppled his mattress to the floor.

Gone. The pictures were gone.

He ripped off the bed linens and tore the pillow from its case. Sweat beaded his brow and his head swam in a frenzied daze. _No. Please no. Not this._

“Eye for an eye,” Beric goaded and pushed himself from the floor with the cigarette still between his lips. He lifted the corner of his mattress to reveal not one but three packs of cigarettes. “You took what was mine, so I took what was yours.”

In one violent motion, Sandor upended Beric’s mattress to the floor and ripped through the piles of letters underneath; hundreds, maybe more, in uneven stacks of lunatic ravings. With frenzied urgency, he searched for anything he could find. Her picture. One letter. Whatever could be salvaged from the carnage of this injustice.

“You ain’t gonna find any of it here,” Beric chuckled and the depraved undercurrent running through his voice said this was no bluff.

Sandor stopped. He stood and slowly turned to Beric. His stomach roiled with nausea, and bile hit the back of his throat in a horrid combination of wrath and loss. They worked in tandem, tearing at his resolve and what little of his composure remained.

“Who has them?” Sandor demanded on a panting breath. His nails cut painfully into the flesh of his calloused palms. “Who has them?” Sandor screamed when Beric hadn’t answered.

The man placidly took another drag from his cigarette and cocked his head to the side. He devoured the sight of Sandor unraveling with chest heaving and body trembling, wound up like a spring with no avenue for release.

“The boys have been out in the yard, talking about all the things they’d do to that girl, whether she likes it or not. Don’t matter to them.”

Sandor spared Beric only a moment of heinous reverie. The man stared fondly out the cell bars, but Sandor hurled himself at Beric. When his body slammed into the man, the cigarette flew from Beric’s mouth. With the wind knocked out of him, Beric gasped for breath.

A tangle on the floor, Sandor landed hits in the soft flesh of Beric’s belly. A crack came across Sandor’s face and with it the taste of blood in his mouth. He didn’t care. He rained fists down on the freak, fueled by pure rage and the notion that Sansa—beautiful, sweet Sansa—was the subject of such obscenity.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Sandor raged, matched now in lunacy with the monster beneath him.

Straddling Beric, Sandor’s fist slammed into his cheek. The skin split with a spray of blood and the crunch of broken teeth. More. He wanted more. He’d squeeze every inch out of the maniac who wailed for help.

With one hand, Sandor pinned Beric to the ground by the neck. The man flailed and screeched. The cigarette had rolled to the edge of the cell, just in reach and its cherry ember beckoning. Sandor snatched it up.

Blood and sweat rolled down Sandor’s cheek as he lifted the cigarette and inched it nearer to Beric’s remaining eye. Only now did Sandor register the cell block in chaos; the blaring echoes and Beric’s voice lost in the sea of chants and cries. Madness. It was absolute madness.

_Walk the line._

It wasn’t the thought that plucked Sandor out of the pandemonium. It wasn’t even a recollection of the warden’s words. The inner voice wasn’t his own. It was Sansa’s.

Disoriented and reeling, Sandor dropped the cigarette to the ground and let it roll through the bars and to the cell block beyond. He let go of Beric and stood, but the man’s bewildered stare turned dark and unnatural. Beric expelled something that sounded like a demonic growl, heaved himself from the floor, and tore across the cell to his own desk. With one arm, he swept off the disorganized and dusty stacks of books and papers.

He spun towards Sandor with the spork clenched in one trembling fist. His knuckles had gone white and his face appeared possessed with rage. The vein at his temple bulged and his eye had gone dark blue.

His eye.

He wielded the utensil, and Sandor lifted his hands in defense, but the assault he expected never came.

His eye.

Beric turned the stubby prongs towards his own face.

The walls pulsed. The fury rose, pounding and howling. The cellblock would split the earth itself open.

“What are you doing?” Sandor demanded over the horrible din. His blood pumped cold in his veins. The contrast to the heat still rolling off his skin left him dizzy. “What the fuck are you doing?”

With one quick jab, Beric buried the spork into his good eye and twisted hard. Something gelatinous spilled down his cheek, and Beric collapsed to the floor with a blood-curdling shriek.

“No!” Sandor screamed.

“Guards! Guards!” Beric cried and writhed like a man possessed in front of Sandor who froze with shock rendering his limbs useless and his mind stalling to comprehend.

Boots pounded against the ground outside Sandor’s cell, and three guards tore inside.

“No,” Sandor heaved, but his voice came rasping and thin. “I didn’t. No!”

“He blinded me!” Beric yowled between hyperventilated breaths as two guards dragged him from the cell.

A blinding blow cracked across the back of Sandor’s head. He collapsed to the ground but fought like mad for his consciousness. A tremendous force yanked him backwards and a guard forced him to his knees.

Before Sandor could fully register Boros in front of him and wielding his billy club, the man swung the club with all his might and landed a blow at Sandor’s ribs. The pain exploded through him and bone surely broke. Sandor doubled over, but a guard held Sandor’s arms up. Another hit cracked his side, but this time from the steel tip of Boros’s boot.

Whatever came over Sandor possessed him with red wrath. He wrenched his arms back and sent two guards tumbling to the floor. Sandor jumped to his feet and dodged Boros’s club with unusual grace. Boros stumbled backwards towards the open cell door. More guards sprinted in and the inmates descended further into the inky depths of abhorrent madness.

Grinding teeth and wild eyes, Boros swung again, but the club landed against Sandor’s palms. He gripped it hard. His strength was unmatched and Boros knew it as fear rippled through his wide eyes that gaped at Sandor. 

War. This was war. He’d have to fight. He wouldn’t get out alive if he didn’t at least try. He’d come back in a body bag like those boys missing limbs.

With one hard yank, Sandor pulled Boros towards him and head-butted the man. Boros’s nose exploded open with gushing blood. He dropped the billy club and lifted one trembling hand to his face.

The other guards descended on Sandor quicker than he could respond. He whipped his body back and forth to break their hold. A flurry of fists and clubs seized on him and forced him to the floor. He shielded his face but screamed when another hit slammed into his ribs.

Sandor lifted his head for only a moment. The ghastly fluorescent light blinded from up above and he squinted against it, but not before a fist came into focus and collided into the bridge of his nose. With a sharp pain between his eyes and the bitter taste of blood in his mouth, Sandor’s vision faded to black.

Usually, that black void held nightmares and visions from the hell he’d endured during war. This time only silence came, and the distant sense of being weightless and floating. A vision surfaced. In a two-toned Chevy, Clyde had killed the engine and stared with somber dread at the prison looming outside the windshield against a slate gray sky. Sandor sat in the passenger seat with his Stetson on his lap.

“This place ain’t about fixing the wicked,” Clyde had warned with a tremor in his voice. He sounded tired too. “You’re not wicked and they won’t try to fix you. Don’t let them tell you who you are. Just keep your head down and survive.”

The parting advice had been eerily similar to what Sandor had heard before being shipped off to war, and he wondered when it would end—the concerted effort it took to survive. Some folk didn’t have to think much about it. He supposed he wasn’t fated to be one of them. He’d nodded, handed off his hat to Griff, and figured the man was probably still young enough that Sandor would see him again in ten years.

Ten years. 

The vision faded, and the sensation returned to Sandor’s legs that dragged along a concrete floor. His side screamed with pain and his face throbbed to the point of numbness. Sandor’s eyes cracked open as they tossed him to the ground in another cell half the size of his normal quarters. The lights flickered, and he rolled to his uninjured side. With his hands shackled in front of him, he grunted and struggled to sit. 

Sandor squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, wide enough to take in his surroundings. He’d never known this place personally but had heard plenty of stories.

“No,” Sandor groaned. His throat was dry. He’d give anything for water. “No, not here.”

The others called it the gray palace on account of its dark gray walls, a metal slab sticking out of cinderblock to suffice as a bed, and the stainless-steel toilet in the back. The height of the ceiling created a haunting echo. No window, not even on the door, meant the room had no light except the feeble and fading fluorescent bulb up above.

Rumor had it a man once stayed in here for ten years and got his yard and shower time on his own but feared open spaces so thoroughly, he damn near had a heart attack out in the yard by himself. Another man spent five years locked up alone, no one to talk to and not much to do other than plan his own death, which he successfully carried out by slaughtering a guard.

Sandor had done nothing so vile, but he knew where he was and knew what it meant. The implications careened into him like a violent wave. Boros hovered near the door of the musty cell that reeked of piss. In his hand was a bucket he dropped to the floor.

“Warden ain’t too happy with you,” Boros informed with pleasure, positively in raptures. His eye would surely blacken from Sandor’s hit, but he had already wiped clean the blood from his face. “He’ll send word to your parole board about the stunt you pulled.” 

A hollow sense of defeat ravaged Sandor from within. It’d eat him alive in here and hound him in the darkness. He’d face a devastating reality all alone—the taste of freedom within reach, just a breath away, but gone on the fickle wind and by fate’s cruel hand.

A soft laugh escaped Boros but gained some weight and volume in a throaty chuckle that descended into his belly with booming hilarity. The man nearly doubled over. His jowls shook and, just when the echo had become unbearable, he lifted his head to Sandor.

“You’re locked up for beating a man within an inch of his life and…” Boros choked on sharp chortles and tears streamed down his fat cheeks. “Days of being granted parole you…” He gasped for breaths, barely able to speak. “You pluck out your cell mate’s eye and beat a guard!”

Sandor pushed himself against the back wall of the tiny, squalid space. “You know I didn’t do it.”

The insult to injury wouldn’t soon be over and he’d be forced to swallow it down, every fucking drop. Devastation came quick on the heels of heartache.

He once told Sansa Stark that no woman waited for him on the outside and she’d responded, with all her graceful and tender-hearted compassion, that that wasn’t true. She was on the outside; thinking of him, waiting for him, worrying after him. If only he’d held on for a little longer and not reacted the way he had, perhaps he’d know the flesh and blood comfort of the woman herself.

Boros composed himself and pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket. He patted his forehead and ruddy cheeks stained with tears. 

“Don’t matter what I think. No one saw what happened. Just you and Beric. It’s your word against his. What kind of lunatic would carve their own eye out?”

Sandor’s gaze snapped to Boros. “You know exactly what kind.”

“No. What I know is that you’d crack,” Boros gloated. The joy departed his eyes and left behind vicious hatred. “You’ve always put yourself above everyone else here. Turns out, you’re no better.”

_Don’t let them tell you who you are._

Boros paced the width of the cell, all four feet of it, in staccato steps, and he stared up at the ceiling. 

“Whaddaya got? Another five years plus whatever comes from maiming Dondarrion?”

He halted and crouched in front of Sandor. Voice just above a whisper, every word came slow.

“Tell me again who the back-country inbred is. Your momma fuck that brother of yours to make you or what?”

Sparing no thought, Sandor spit in Boros’s pudgy face. The man sucked in a sharp breath and, in one quick motion, the back of his hand cracked across Sandor’s cheek. Shooting pain ripped through Sandor’s head.

Boros stood and turned to the metal bucket near the door but didn’t pick it up. Instead, he nudged it along the concrete with his foot until it was a few feet from Sandor.

“I tell you what,” Boros said. “I thought about sparing you this as a last gesture of goodwill. Seeing as how you just don’t know when to quit, I think it’s fitting we do this together.”

Bent over, Boros reached into the bucket and pulled out a matchbox. He gave it a shake as his lips peeled in a salacious smile. “Just you and me.”

_No._

Sandor’s heart plummeted past his stomach now sick and through the floor where the cold seeped in. It must’ve gotten in his blood that now pulsed through his veins with a grim chill.

He dropped his eyes. He didn’t need to see. He already knew what this was and, in the periphery of his down-turned vision, Boros produced a bundle of envelopes. The border of roses was familiar to Sandor now and unmistakably Sansa’s letters. When he glanced up, Boros had her photographs too.

He might’ve begged and pleaded that the letters and pictures be spared. He’d do his time, whatever it ended up being, but he needed those to get through. And though solitary confinement was a cruel punishment in its own right, Sandor would gladly do his time in here too if it meant something of Sansa was waiting for him after.

He didn’t beg, but only because it was what Boros so clearly wanted. The man waited a beat longer than he should and stared at Sandor with silent anticipation of pleas for mercy. When that didn’t happen, the man slowly pulled Sansa’s letters from their envelopes, balled them up, and tossed them in the bucket. When he had a sufficient layer of kindling, Boros lit a match and dropped that in too. Slow at first, the flames consumed the letters and Sandor closed his eyes.

Gone.

All her sweet words—the one’s that brought him comfort, the only thing here that made him smile and reminded him he wasn’t forgotten—were gone. With the scent of burning paper, Sandor’s heart pounded a faster rhythm, drumming an awful beat that pulsed at his temples. He swore he felt the heat too; the flames close to his face.

Most of the time, Sandor ignored his scars, the worst of them having healed up with medical intervention but the lasting damage still visible. With the fire came the memories he pushed aside to live his life—the feel of flesh burning from bone; the smell; the sound of screaming. In the years he spent in war, those screams echoed again, louder and with more voices joining the choir—women burned alive, their bodies covering children who suffocated from smoke and a mother’s sacrifice. All these years, he fought a silent war inside himself.

_I can’t do this. I can’t._

The memories threatened him and gathered behind the levee he’d built to keep them away. It’d topple over in here. All this time, he held it together and now it was coming apart. The levee would break, and he’d get swept away.

When he thought that time might be now, Sansa’s words surfaced within him.

_“I think life brings us the things we need, when we need it. You mentioned whatever has grown between us. I too think of it often and how I had been wishing for you, Sandor Clegane. All this time, I wished for you. What a gift you are.”_

It occurred to him then that Sansa’s letters didn’t just exist in the tangible that burned now. Just as much as she’d written them on linen stationery, she’d inscribed them in some haven of the heart, a place where fire couldn’t reach. That was the ineffable quality, he realized now; her words imperishable and, more strikingly, the compassion behind them had started to bring his wrath and pain to heel.

With a crumpling sound, Sandor cracked his eyes open. The flames had reached the top of the bucket where smoke billowed out. Boros set in with the rest of the letters, balling up each and tossing them in. On the last letter, he skimmed the page as Sandor looked on. His throat burned and chest ached with a heaviness he hadn’t felt in years.

“Last you’ll ever hear from her,” Boros said and held the letter above the bucket. “Hope you memorized all those words she wasted on a piece of shit like you.”

_Don’t let them tell you who you are._

He dropped the letter, and Sandor watched it drift to the bucket where the flames eagerly consumed it.

“You ain’t getting letters from her no more. You won’t be sending them either. As far as she’s concerned, you died on this day.”

Sandor shifted uncomfortably in his spot and stared at his lap. His mouth filled with saliva and his eyes stung. The letters were gone now, and he would’ve been happier if Boros had just gutted him and left him on the floor to bleed out. It seemed a kinder fate.

Boros reached for the Polaroids but took a moment to study them, stoking Sandor’s fiery hatred once more. He must’ve given himself away. Boros’s eyes snapped to him with a silent warning.

“Last you’ll ever see of her,” he mumbled and jabbed both pictures towards Sandor.

“Take a good look at that pretty face. You’ll never see it. Maybe I’ll make a trip to Devil Creek to that bar she sings at. Might be she needs a man. Awful shame, her being there all alone. You heard about what’s happening? A killer on the loose; ripping apart young women just like her. A girl’s already gone missing in her town. They haven’t found the body yet.”

Sandor would’ve laughed—long and hard—at the thought of Boros rumbling into Devil Creek and slithering up to a divine creature like Sansa, as if she wouldn’t see right through his bullshit. That didn’t matter. He barreled past the opportunity to get his dig in and sat up straight, ignoring the searing pain at his side. He hadn’t heard about a killer and didn’t rightly care about Boros’s taunts either. They rolled right off as Sandor stared down the man.

“A killer,” Sandor repeated. “How long has it been going on?”

In an agitated huff, Boros tossed both Polaroids into the metal bucket with no further pomp and circumstance. “None of your concern now. Not like you can do anything about it.”

Boros watched Sandor and waited. A long bout of silence stretched between them. Small at first, a faint smile lifted the corner of Sandor’s mouth and Boros gaped at him in irate confusion.

“What the fuck do you have to smile about?” he snapped, but his outburst wasn’t that of a man incensed. It was the outburst of a child who hadn’t gotten his way. This was it. Something Sandor could sink his claws into, and Boros was stupid enough to walk right into it.

“That it?” Sandor tipped his head to the bucket and smirked, but not because the hole running through his chest hurt any less. He’d flipped the script to take back his power.

Boros seemed to recognize now that he’d just burnt up the only thing he had over Sandor and had rendered all that satisfaction to nothing more than ash. Sure as the sun would set on Sandor’s heartache and loss, he’d gained something too—the upper hand that only a man who has lost everything can claim. With nothing left to lose, Sandor was more dangerous now than ever, and that realization seemed to dawn on Boros. The man picked up the bucket of dying embers and backed towards the cell door.

“Enjoy the silence,” Boros seethed and spared one final glance at Sandor, perhaps hoping to find a paper-thin bluff in tatters and Sandor in tears.

Instead, Sandor lifted his shackled hands and raised one middle finger in a last stand of defiance. Furious at having lost the last word and possibly this battle, Boros slammed the door shut.

The shifting tide brought with it another unexpected blessing—Sandor had conquered a piece of those flames and they too had lost a bit of their power. He’d might’ve lost the letters, but not the sentiment behind them. Somewhere in Devil Creek, sweet Sansa Stark was thinking of him and waiting for him, and all he’d really lost was the physical rendering of that blooming affection.

If he closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall, he could still hear her voice, trace her face in his memories, and conjure what she might say to him now, the comfort she’d give.

Sandor climbed onto the metal slab and spread out. He stared up at the void above him, but a grisly thought lingered. By the time a guard came, unshackled his hands, and served him a meal that could scarcely pass as food, the thought still haunted him. A killer in a small town meant Sansa might be in trouble and that above all else, including his own freedom, galvanized Sandor’s resolve.

_“I think life brings us the things we need, when we need it.”_

He’d crossed paths with Sansa for a reason, and it wasn’t for their end to come like this. For the first time in so long, Sandor surrendered to fate and, more significantly, to faith. Not faith in God or some other bullshit, but in her; faith that she was right, faith that this wasn’t the end, and faith that he’d find his way to her come hell or high water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thank you so much for reading and for the continued love! It really means a lot to me and the thoughtfulness, kindness, and support you show me really warms my heart. This fandom has amazing people in it. I thank you! 
> 
> This was a hard chapter to write and I’ll just say as a glimmer of hope—it’s always darkest before dawn! Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed! See you next week with another Sansa chapter! Until then, take care and stay safe out there!


	7. One of These Nights

“I have to make a phone call,” Sansa announced in the diner but was met with comical silence; the kind where everyone stopped and stared all at once. 

Jeyne smiled politely with a coffee carafe in hand and a pencil behind her ear. The line cook gawked with worried curiosity and spatula hovering over the grill. Even the family in the corner booth turned to look. They’d rolled up in a station wagon with Tennessee plates, all stretching and moaning and the man of the household keeping quiet watch over the parking lot. The Texas plains were infamous these days and travelers didn’t linger long.

“Well, alright then,” Larry the line cook chuckled, and the diner resumed its activity.

Sansa dug through her apron’s pocket for the phone number she’d gotten from the operator and scribbled on scrap paper. She squinted at the digits where a “4” might’ve been a “9” and punched in the number on the diner’s phone.

As the line rang, Sansa ducked around the corner and down the narrow hall that led to the bathrooms. The phone cord stretched to its limits and, with each ring, the doubts seeped in deeper than she could’ve imagined.

_What am I doing?_

She was about to hang up and consider this just a silly endeavor, but the line picked up.

“Wichita Falls Correctional Institution. Inmate Visitation Department. Rita speaking.”

The woman on the other end spoke in curt tones that snipped off the ends of her words. She didn’t sound rude exactly, just exhausted with the long, languid sigh she gave.

“Hi Rita, I’m calling because I’d like to arrange a visit with an inmate,” Sansa chirped with all her courtesies put to good use. “Are you the right person to speak to for that?”

“Name?” The woman demanded and apparently had far fewer courtesies to spare. Rustling papers and distant laughter drifted through the phone.

Sansa dampened the merriment in her voice. “My name is Sansa Stark, ma’am.”

“No, love, the inmate’s name,” Rita said with sympathetic condescension, the verbal equivalent to a pat on the head.

Sansa cleared her throat and stood tall with her shoulders squared. Not that it mattered.

“Oh, um, Sandor Clegane.” A smile bloomed as his full name eased off her lips. “I don’t have his inmate number.”

“Hold please.”

The line fell silent before Sansa could thank Rita for her courtesy, a subtle jab at the lack thereof. Eternity passed and Sansa leaned against the wall. The woman from Tennessee and her young daughter headed for the bathroom. Sansa smiled sweetly at them and smiled again, though a little less sweet, ten minutes later when they retreated to their table and she was still on hold.

A sinking feeling took root. Maybe Rita had given up and perhaps she should too. Maybe this was a sign just to leave it well enough alone. Two weeks ago, her phone call with Sandor had ended abruptly. It was the last she’d heard from him. Her letters since then had gone unanswered.

With each passing day, Sansa would check the mail with dwindling joy. It’d become harder to explain away the sudden end to their correspondence. Self-doubts quickly evolved into hallow dread that something terrible had happened to him.

When Rita returned to the line, Sansa sucked in a sharp breath.

“That inmate is serving additional disciplinary action and won’t get his visitation rights back until next week.”

_Additional disciplinary action._ Sansa turned the phrase over in her mind and grappled with it long enough that Rita intervened.

“Solitary confinement, ma’am.” Her monotone voice veered towards the dismal. “For your awareness, he’s not receiving mail either. I see you’ve sent him letters. If you want to come next week, I’ll get you on the books.”

The weight of the world lifted, and Sansa released a heavy sigh. Weeks’ worth of tension and worry fled her body and left her feeling weightless and woozy. Her heart soared at the prospect of meeting him, but her stomach sank at what Sandor must’ve been through these last few weeks. It only solidified her resolve. She stood upright and bounced lightly in place with the phone cord whacking the wall in response.

“Yes, thank you so much. That’d be wonderful!”

“Now if this is a conjugal visit, there are a few more steps involved and you’ll have to wait a bit longer,” Rita informed rather plainly. 

“Conjugal?” Sansa repeated. She’d never heard that word before. It sounded odd and unformed coming out of her mouth.

Rita paused before speaking again. “Are you looking to have relations with him?”

“Well, yes, why else would I come see him?” Sansa replied with a bright giggle to mask any offense Rita might take.

It seemed a strange question to her. Wasn’t that the point of a visit—to relate and converse, get to know one another face-to-face? Rita spared no laughter, though. The other end of the line went dead for a fraction longer than what was normal.

“Sexual relations, Ms. Stark,” Rita sighed into the phone. “Conjugal visits are for intimate activities.”

“Oh!” Sansa yelped. “No. Yes…well, no.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Her tongue was heavy in her mouth and her cheeks burned. “No. I just want to see him. Not in that way. Well, I mean…for now…no, just a regular visit.”

She shook her head that swam just thinking about these conjugal activities. What if Rita hadn’t caught onto Sansa’s confusion and signed her up for a visit like that anyway?

If nothing else, the gaffe broke the ice and Rita released a hearty chuckle, one that even Sansa could tell wasn’t at her expense. When the woman spoke again, it was kinder and gentler too.

“Next Monday at five in the evening is the soonest he’s eligible for a visit. Tuesday morning is also available if that works better. You’ll have thirty minutes on account of his recent discipline. In a few weeks, he’ll get his full hour back, if you’d like to wait until then.”

Sansa scanned the old photographs of Devil Creek that lined the wall. Her schedule scarcely changed and yet all the days and hours she normally worked fled her mind as the reality set in. A week from now she could be sitting across from Sandor, as close as they’d ever been.

She had picked up the Monday evening shift, though, and worked Tuesday mornings too. Sansa glanced at Jeyne who looked dead on her feet after working back-to-back shifts. All the waitresses refused to work nights. The fair solution—they rotated those shifts. Three waitresses had already quit, finding that compromise unappetizing and unacceptable.

“Ms. Stark?” Rita pressed. “Will either of those times work for you?”

“Next Monday is fine,” she replied before better judgment could stop her. She’d figure out the logistics later. “Thank you, ma’am. Will…” Sansa turned her back to the diner and lowered her voice. “Will he know that I’m coming?”

“He’ll know he has a visitor.” Rita sounded uncertain and something in her voice darkened too, all the previous levity spent. “Given the circumstances, I’m not sure he’ll get word it’s you, specifically.”

“Oh.” Sansa slumped against the wall, dejected though she couldn’t say why. Part of her thought it might be nice to surprise him, but a greater part sensed what Rita left unsaid. He’d suffered the last few weeks without her letters and with whatever punishment he’d endured. What she wanted now was for him to find comfort in knowing she’d be there.

“I tell you what,” Rita mumbled as if revealing a secret. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll see what I can make happen. I have no doubt he’ll need some good news coming out of solitary.”

* * *

On the verge of tears, Jeyne handed off the leather overnight bag. Sansa tossed it in the Cutlass’s back seat and shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head, still not sure why Jeyne insisted on the fanfare of seeing her off.

“Don’t look so sad,” Sansa laughed and shut the back door. “I’ll only be gone for the night.”

Jeyne nodded with a weak smile, though it was strong enough to drive away emergent tears. “I just worry about you.”

Sansa examined the empty neighborhood street, and Jeyne’s eyes followed. The better part of July had burned away with sweltering heat and the occasional wild storm. Fear had robbed Devil Creek of summer’s sweet joy—carefree nights and leisure-filled days.

Just north of town, the missing girl was found in a tangle of weeds by the railroad tracks. News traveled fast, and the coroner confirmed she’d died only hours before being found. The implication went unspoken but hardly unnoticed—four weeks missing, but only four hours dead. Killing wasn’t the maniac’s only thrill.

Suspicion blanketed the town heavier than ever and, to make matters worse, the stranger had rambled in during Jeyne’s shift. She’d served him coffee but trembled so fiercely she spilled it all over his pancakes. He’d only laughed about it, but the poor girl was convinced he’d added her to a list of victims because of the transgression.

Jeyne stuffed her fingers in the pockets of her high-waisted shorts. “You hear anything else from the sheriff?”

Sansa fiddled with her keys and shook her head. Jeyne asked this question every other day, as much for her own comfort as Sansa’s.

“They still say there’s nothing they can do about it and that it’s not illegal for someone to be calling me.”

“They’re not just phone calls. You’re being harassed!” Jeyne protested but quieted her voice when it traveled an unusual distance down the desolate street. She was preaching to the choir. “Given what’s been going on, they need to take this more seriously.”

Sansa drew a heavy breath and adjusted the straps of her powder blue dress that tied at the shoulders.

“I know,” she agreed with a shrug. “That’s what I told them, but they said they’re stretched thin and are busy, and have no time to run down some silly late-night calls. I’m sure they’ll find the time eventually.”

There it was again. Sansa undersold the seriousness to Jeyne, Theon, and even Harwin who ranted about all sorts of technology the sheriff could use to identify the caller. The calls had come more frequently than Sansa let on; not just once, but three times now and always the same. Soon.

Sansa’s sound bite—it was just a sick joke, someone using the terror and uncertainty to entertain themselves. In reality, she hardly slept well most nights and, if she turned inward long enough to listen to the knowing voice inside, it told her this was more than just a joke.

“Are you gonna tell Sandor when you see him?” Jeyne asked. She pulled a hand from her pocket and shielded her eyes from the afternoon sun.

“I don’t know. There’s nothing he can do about it, and I wouldn’t want to worry him.”

That seemed to be the right answer on paper where logic prevailed and Sansa considered herself sensible. In her heart, she wanted to confide in him and gain some comfort in whatever he might say about it. Sansa chewed her lip and rested her hands on her hips. If nothing else, she had a long car ride to think it over.

Jeyne gazed into the back seat at the leather bag and two batches of home-made chocolate chip cookies.

“I still can’t believe you’re doing this.” She flashed a doting smile, one that left Sansa awash in memories.

In the weeks before Sansa left Devil Creek, Jeyne would smile at her this way, a smile replete with distant admiration. Jeyne had confessed how much she envied Sansa’s bravery and wanderlust for new horizons. Sansa had collected the compliment but knew it wasn’t really bravery or wanderlust that sent her to Kansas City. It was a foolhardy indulgence in her own naivete about dreams and love and a golden cowboy who’d give her the glittering life she was meant for.

Sansa dropped her eyes to her nude platform sandals. Her red polished toes matched her fingernails. 

“You think he’ll turn me away or something?” Sansa laughed and nervously tucked a lock of straightened hair behind her ear.

She lifted her gaze and searched Jeyne’s eyes for trepidation or the words the girl might never say because she was too polite and because Sansa was too far down this path to turn back now. Sansa found none of that, only mild concern and those stray bits of envy again.

“No.” Jeyne shook her head. “I just think showing up unannounced is like turning up to a party without an invitation.”

“It’s not a party, Jeyne. It’s prison.”

The tension broke with Jeyne’s girlish laughter that Sansa matched. Jeyne squeezed her in a tight embrace. When she let go, she took Sansa by both hands.

“Have you asked for signs?”

With Jeyne’s question, Sansa contemplated the gold cross around the girl’s neck. Jeyne looked for signs in everything and half the time found nothing.

Sansa shook her head. “I don’t believe in all that.”

“Well, I’ll pray you get one anyway,” Jeyne whispered. “Are you nervous?”

Sansa nodded softly and reevaluated her sun dress—light linen, ruffled at the bust with a hem of eyelet lace and falling just above the knees. A brown leather belt cinched her waist.

“Very,” Sansa admitted and forced a smile.

The sun beat hot against her skin now flush and her heart thrummed a faster beat. She’d vanquished her doubts all morning and staved them off as she packed her bag and combed her hair until it shined in long, glossy sheets of auburn. It danced on the breeze now.

Jeyne lifted a hand and lovingly brushed the hair from Sansa’s cheek.

“Why? He sounds smitten with you already. It’s not like you’re going there to win the man over. That’d be like retracing your steps.”

Sansa studied the crack in her driveway’s concrete between them. The question was tangled up with others—why she was going in the first place, what she hoped to gain, and where this was going. Unearthing the answer to one meant ripping up all the others, the roots and stems all bundled together.

She couldn’t meet Jeyne’s imploring stare and instead looked over the girl’s shoulder and across the street to where Mrs. Miller peered out the window.

“I left this town certain of who I was—Miss Texas, marrying into an oil family, on my way to being a singer—and I came back untethered to all those identities and not knowing a damn thing about myself anymore.”

She shifted her eyes to Jeyne and spoke to the heart of it all because it wasn’t as if Sansa didn’t know what this came down to. She’d been staring down that truth all along and all alone.

“I’m nervous because I want him to see me for who I am now; not who I used to be or even who I wanted to be. And I want it to be enough.”

Jeyne shuffled forward and regarded Sansa with heartfelt sincerity.

“Every version of you has always been enough,” she murmured. “Now get gone and drive safe.”

With a bright smile and the nerves morphing to butterflies in her belly, Sansa hugged her friend and yanked open the car door. She turned to Jeyne who was already retreating to her car parked on the street.

“Thank you for covering my shift,” Sansa hollered. “If that strange man comes around…”

“I know. Larry’s looking out,” Jeyne laughed, but Sansa discerned the undercurrent of unease well enough. “Call the diner when you get to your motel for the night.”

“I will.” Sansa sealed the promise on a kiss she blew from her fingertips. She climbed into the car and honked as she passed Jeyne.

The three-hour drive commenced with nervous tedium. Sansa tapped the wheel and sang along to her favorite songs on the radio until the station cut in and out with static. In the last hour, she drove in pensive silence but with her mind quieted. Perhaps she’d spent all her mental currency on worrying about whether this was right and if he’d even want to see her. She never got her answer from him but, if Sandor turned her away, she’d chalk it up to grossly misunderstanding his letters.

The stretch of highway connecting Devil Creek and Wichita Falls possessed nothing all that fascinating. Wide stretches of open land extended as far as Sansa could see. The road eventually narrowed to two lanes with an overgrown grassy median in the middle. Along the way, Sansa glimpsed abandoned farmhouses and barns, some of which had collapsed in on themselves, just a pile of sun-bleached wood with tall grass poking through.

She even saw one large dilapidated mansion surrendered to time and the elements. With its stained-glass windows partially smashed out, the palatial structure had decayed away in shades of gray, just like those prairie houses. Sansa wondered who would’ve deserted such beauty and left it to rot.

So much seemed forgotten with time around here—the billboards with entire panels missing and the remaining ones faded; houses and farmsteads left abandoned; entire existences wiped away with passing years. As the miles slipped past, the highway took on a haunting desolation and something eerie seemed to shift in the grass and shrubbery that swayed with rising wind.

Sansa pulled off the highway towards Wichita Falls as clouds rolled in, thick as mud and dark as ash with a storm gathering on the horizon. At a stoplight in town, she grabbed the map from the passenger seat and traced the remaining route with her finger. Up the road, to the left, and then a right.

She navigated those turns with her stomach in knots, palms slick with sweat, and lightheaded as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath. The prison loomed at the end of a cracked road dotted with potholes. The blocky monolith had no features to spare, just small slits for windows and three layers of fences with curls of barbed wire at the top. Sansa approached the visitor’s gate and announced herself with a put-on smile, but the bundle of nerves had already snowballed in her belly. Her voice shook and so too did her hands that gripped the wheel.

In the parking lot outside the visitor entrance, Sansa killed the engine and sat in silence. She stared at her hands in her lap and could almost visualize her resolve dissolving away as the doubts crept in again. _What am I doing?_

He hadn’t asked her to come and showing up unannounced and uninvited flew in the face of all her manners. _It’s prison, not a party._

The reminder was enough to stopper her worries. Sansa adjusted the rear-view mirror, slathered on a layer of lip gloss, and dabbed more perfume on her wrists.

In the end, the last bit was for naught. After a lengthy check-in process, Sansa waited behind thick plexiglass. Dividers on either side of her offered feeble privacy and Sansa could hear the other visitors—parents, siblings, spouses, children—shifting in the metal chairs that made a raucous noise against a polished concrete floor.

She hadn’t known what to expect. What pie-in-the-sky expectations she’d cobbled together on the drive up, Rita had swiftly shot down. Sansa had come in smiling like an idiot and carrying two containers of homemade cookies. She’d handed one off to Rita—a short and stout blonde—and thanked her for her kindness, but Rita only stared blankly at Sansa, clearly having forgotten who the hell she was.

The woman accepted the cookies gratefully enough but informed Sansa that prisoners weren’t allowed homemade food items. Sansa had stood on the other side of the counter, flush with embarrassment and laughing at her own expense. Rita had handed off a visitor badge and asked Sansa to fill out paperwork. With blasé disinterest, the woman also told Sansa that she’d be meeting Sandor behind a partition.

And just like that, Rita had deflated Sansa’s visions of turning up with cookies and sitting next to Sandor, smelling sweet like lemon cakes and perhaps even holding his hand too. _It’s prison, not a picnic,_ was just as apt a saying, and Sansa should’ve taken her own wisdom to heart. The girlish simplicity of her vision was at tremendous odds with the reality now.

With her legs tightly crossed, Sansa’s top knee bounced incessantly. It tapped against the underside of a small counter butted up against the plexiglass. The other side of the glass was empty, just a mirror image with a phone, a small counter, metal chair, and white cinderblock wall. Fluorescent lights flickered up above.

Something in the sterility intensified her nerves. It left her nauseous and dizzy. She fiddled with the bottom hem of her dress. The skirt was faintly wrinkled for having been in the car for so long.

She ran trembling fingers through her hair and cleared her throat. Without a clock, she waited in timeless limbo, each moment passing with anticipation and unbridled anxious energy running wild within her and ravaging what composure she had left. _Breathe._

The reminder was futile. Her palms were clammy and breaths shallow. _Just breathe. Relax. Breathe._

Without prelude or warning, a buzzer sounded on the other side of the glass. Something heavy slammed against the wall, a door perhaps. Sansa sat up straight. Her heart pounded. One by one, inmates dressed in orange jumpsuits passed the glass. A few lingered before moving on and Sansa waited with tattered breaths passing parted lips.

On it went.

Surely, there couldn’t be any more inmates. Sansa leaned back enough to peer beyond the partition and counted each stall of visitors. Ten or more stalls for the ten or more inmates who’d already poured in. Movement in her periphery caught her attention. A form loomed on the other side of the glass.

She wouldn’t have had to look. Sansa intuited that Sandor Clegane had a presence to him—unmistakable, heavy, and filling whatever space he occupied, big or small. A man like him commanded and consumed the room.

Sansa drew a deep breath, anything to calm the tremors that seized her limbs. She turned to look. Sandor was quite possibly the tallest man she’d ever seen and a solid block of muscle. His form blotted out the light with a broad chest and even broader shoulders.

He whipped the metal chair from the counter. The muscles in his arms rippled with tension and he sat in what looked to be an uncomfortable position. His hulking body dwarfed the metal chair and his legs were probably stuffed beneath the small counter. Long, jet black hair tumbled far past his shoulders and suited him quite nicely.

It wasn’t his height or imposing build that sent a shock wave through Sansa, stealing her breath and stilling her movements. She’d envisioned him for so long and everything she willed into existence with her thoughts and sheltered in her heart fell short of the man staring through the glass.

Sansa matched his gray eyes, mesmerized by the sheer intensity behind them. Neither made a move for the telephone. Suspended in time of which they had so little, they each savored the sight. Unbridled, their respective gazes roamed over the other. Manners fell away. She didn’t care. It was him. Even if he told her he hadn’t wanted to see her, just this moment made it well worth it all.

The unexpected intimacy left Sansa reeling, but she noticed now—or at least paid deliberate attention to—a patch of scars on the left side of Sandor’s face from his hairline to his chin. The skin was a darker pink and held a subtle shine. The unmarred side of his face was decidedly masculine and handsome—strong and square jaw, sharp cheekbones, and a nose she could tell was hooked despite the splint that covered it.

The urgency set in now; as if her feet had finally touched the ground and she remembered what this was all about. Without breaking eye contact, Sansa reached for the phone and Sandor did the same. Both her hands clung to the receiver as she pressed it to her ear.

“Hi,” Sansa breathed on a shaky exhale and smiled with a thrill she hadn’t felt in years. “Are you surprised?”

Sandor didn’t quite smile back, just slowly nodded in thunderstruck wonderment and a smirk that gently lifted one corner of his mouth.

“That doesn’t even begin to cover it,” he said on a deep rumble, every bit of him coalescing together now. Sansa had received just pieces of him in his letters and glued them together the best she could, but only managed an approximation. The details dazzled her now—his voice; his presence; his form; the way he looked at her as if she were a phantasm apt to disappear if he so much as blinked. 

“I never thought I’d see this day,” he whispered, and his eyes sunk to the counter when a pained expression surfaced. 

Sansa scrambled to drive it away. “I know our phone call was cut short and maybe you didn’t want to see me, but I—”

“No,” he interjected and left no margin for misinterpretation in the way he spoke or how he looked at her now. “I wanted you here,” he assured. “I _want_ you here, little bird,” he corrected to account for the present, the two of them face-to-face now.

A shiver ran down Sansa’s spine as she watched her nickname form on his mouth. He licked his bottom lip and evaluated her, but his appraisal was different. A smile spread across his lips. No man had ever looked at her this way—lustful to be sure, but with deep satisfaction and awe, a veneration of sorts.

Sandor leaned forward and rested one arm on the counter with his other elbow propped next to it. Beneath his eyes, purple bruises had faded to yellow.

“You’re hurt,” Sansa remarked softly and mimicked his movement. She scooted forward as close as she could to the glass. The edge of the counter dug against her ribcage.

Sandor shrugged, and not in some facade of strength. Physical pain seemed to register little with him. “Just a broken nose, and a few bruised ribs. Nothing for you to worry about.”

His gaze fell to her lips before wandering to her eyes again. With that sweep, Sansa’s pulse rose. She liked the way he looked at her; no stolen glances and entirely enticing with how he stared as long as he damn well pleased. Beyond the brazen, there was raw tenderness that matched what she’d discerned in his letters and had heard in his voice.

“What happened?” she asked. “I heard you were in solitary.”

Sandor’s eyes narrowed as he settled back in his seat, obviously perplexed that she’d have this detail. In his letters, he spared little of his life here and used the space to focus on her.

Sansa cleared her throat, flustered at the thought that she’d pried too much. “They didn’t say for what,” she added quickly.

“I was defending your honor, believe it or not,” Sandor chuckled. His laugh was warm and deep, and Sansa fought the instinct to close her eyes and let the sound wash over her. “How’s that for those cowboys you seem to love?”

The last bit came faintly mocking. In one of her letters, Sansa had confessed her affinity for _real_ cowboys—salt of the earth men who were strong and brave; both wild and generous of spirit. She’d also bemoaned Rhinestone cowboys—the pretty boys from Houston and Dallas who liked to look the part with a Stetson on their head and Luccheses on their feet but took no interest in being the kind of man worthy of the distinction.

Sandor’s response had stuck with her. His words had been apt as always and striking at the heart of the matter: 

_“A lot of men ride in that long shadow of what a real cowboy is. When the noon sun comes and that shadow disappears, I think you’ll find only city boys and shit heads are what’s left.”_

Sansa smiled at him again. Head tilted, her hair tumbled from her shoulder. “I’d say you shouldn’t have, but it looks too late for that now.”

The capricious nature of Sandor’s gaze revealed itself again. His eyes traced her features with studious concentration as though he were memorizing. She did the same with him, though her hands still trembled, and skin felt flush despite goosebumps prickling her arms.

“You drove all this way to see me,” he said. “Now that you’ve gotten a good look, I can’t imagine you think it was worth the hassle.”

He laughed again, rough and sardonic, but contemplated his fingers that tapped against the counter.

_His scars,_ Sansa realized. Of course. He had never truly answered her when she asked what he looked like and didn’t have a picture to send either. The reticence on the matter fell into place now.

“That’s not true at all,” Sansa insisted and the firmness in her voice drew his attention. “You’re so handsome, Sandor. Your scars suit you.”

He barked another laugh but stared at her incredulously. “I’ve never heard that take before.”

Sandor earned his experiences. The trouble with pretty boys were the tall tales of valor and bravery that didn’t match their perfectly put together lives. And if Sansa weren’t still stumbling over her words with her heart pumping a frantic beat, she might’ve told Sandor that.

“There’s a first time for everything, I guess,” was all she could manage with a breathy exhale. 

When his eyes roved over her body again, the intensity of desire had returned. “Yes, there is.”

It took everything she had to meet his eyes and not for fear or disgust like he might’ve assumed. Sansa studied his scars, and Sandor let her. He didn’t look away or hide—there wasn’t anywhere to go anyhow—but Sansa knew he was watching and waiting for some breach in her courtesy where disappointment or repulsion broke through.

“Did it happen in the war?” Sansa asked when the curiosity got the better of her.

Sandor’s jaw clenched and irritation flashed in his eyes. “Why does everybody fucking assume that?” 

“I’m so sorry,” Sansa murmured to assuage his sudden harshness. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”

A soft sigh rustled through the receiver, and Sandor seemed to toil over something. A heavy creased formed between his brows, now pulled together. He opened his mouth to speak but thought the better of it, hesitating over whatever rested on his tongue.

“You can tell me anything you want to,” Sansa soothed and leaned closer to the glass.

Sandor looked towards the door from which he’d entered, and, for a moment, Sansa assumed he was content to not tell her much, to keep his secrets and move past whatever was suddenly so insurmountable between them. It rested heavy and formidable like a boulder, and Sansa opened her mouth to change the subject, but Sandor finally spoke.

“No, it wasn’t the war,” he said and looked to her again. “My brother did this to me when I was a kid.”

“I didn’t know you have a brother,” Sansa replied, uncertain of how to navigate this new bit of information.

“No reason you would.” Sandor shrugged and shifted his gaze momentarily. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. “I never told you. I don’t talk about him.”

Sandor stiffened, his spine rigid and jaw set firm, but just as Sansa was about to assure him that he didn’t have to talk about his brother, Sandor revealed more.

“I was eight. I’d gotten into his set of cowboys and Indians toys. He was older, never played with them. They just sat on a shelf in his bedroom. I reasoned it was a waste and figured if he didn’t know, there was no harm in playing with them myself. Well, he found me with them and dragged me kicking and screaming to the fireplace. He shoved my face into the embers still hot enough to do this.”

He pointed to his scars and, if he felt better for having exposed what was obviously a dark and agonizing secret, Sansa wouldn’t know. Face impassible, Sandor retreated behind his reserve again. Sansa shook her head and gathered what words she could.

“Sandor, that’s horrible. I can’t even imagine. I’m so sorry.” It hardly seemed enough, and Sansa felt the sting of tears. “Where is he now?”

“Where he belongs,” Sandor sneered with smoldering anger behind his words. “He was a bull rider, well-known in the San Antonio circuit for riding the meanest bulls in Texas. The dumb ass got himself skewered during a rodeo. He bled out right there for everyone to see.”

Sandor stared fondly at the ceiling with a grim smile spreading across his lips. “When I got the news, I celebrated with the best whiskey I could find. The night he died some part of me came alive, just in time to be shipped off to war.”

When she thought he might grieve his lot in life, Sandor chuckled again and shook his head, perhaps perplexed at the irony of it all but claiming what humor in it he could. Behind that partition of humor, Sansa discerned the shape of what remained.

She lifted a hand and pressed it to the glass. The gesture quieted Sandor and, when his laughter faded, he stroked with one finger where her palm was. Locked at the eyes, the unspoken passed unfazed and unabated between the glass, the only barrier between them now. _If only it could fall away._ Sandor nodded slowly, as if he’d heard her thought.

“Enough of that,” he murmured with a doting smile, this one meant for her because his bitterness fled and there was that tenderness again. The sweet flutter of butterflies emerged in Sansa’s belly once more. “You didn’t come all this way for me to tell you sad stories.”

“You can tell me any stories you want. I’ll always listen.” Sansa replied on a soft breath. “You wanna hear something funny?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I do,” Sandor replied and reclined in his seat when Sansa pulled her hand from the glass. He appeared more at ease now, as if that great big boulder between them had been worn down to a pebble and kicked away. 

“I brought you cookies, but they confiscated them,” Sansa giggled with a wave of giddiness. “What was I thinking? Of course, they did. Who brings cookies to a prison?”

“Too few in this world. A woman like you.” The statement came with a different brand of heaviness, but no loss of longing. “It worked out. I don’t want your cookies.”

“Yes, you do,” Sansa teased with a coquettish smile. The nerves had melted away and left behind a pleasured buzz and the desire to be closer.

“Sansa Stark,” Sandor said her name long and slow and leaned forward in his seat. His eyes darkened with delight. “Already calling my bluff.Yes, I’ll happily eat your cookies.”

He bit his bottom lip and the grunt he gave was faint, but Sansa saw the sentiment behind it plain enough. If looks could consume, he would eat her alive right now, and she surmised she’d enjoy every bit of it. 

The heat crept down Sansa’s chest that subtly heaved with quickened breaths and earned Sandor’s attention.

“I just want to look at you,” he veritably groaned. He gripped the phone receiver tight enough that his knuckles flushed white.

The attention he lavished on her might’ve once made Sansa nervous or eager to flee. She’d had her fill of men devouring her with lascivious gazes. But Sandor’s empowered in a way and emboldened her now to toss her hair behind her shoulders. Her dress wasn’t exactly low cut, but in a shameless gesture, Sansa tugged lightly at the bust to reveal a supple curve of cleavage.

“Fuck,” Sandor sighed and ran one hand over his mouth. “You are something. You know that? I’ll be sleeping well tonight.” 

“I hope you will. I’m sure it’s hard to get a good night’s sleep here.”

Sansa only meant to be supportive and sympathetic, but Sandor broke with a rumbling laugh at a joke Sansa wasn’t quite following.

“I heard you didn’t get my last few letters,” she said. “I was worried about you.”

“Don’t be. They took all the other letters and pictures you sent too. I got nothing of you here.”

Grief seemed to fall over Sandor like a shadow he couldn’t escape, so he shrugged and shook his head as if he’d accepted that cruel fate. He hadn’t, Sansa could tell, and the pain it imparted ran deep and enduring in him.

“You always have me here,” Sansa murmured and cast an imploring gaze at him through the glass. What she wouldn’t give to crawl right through and into his arms. “Remember what I said in that first letter? You’re not forgotten. I didn’t forget you. I was never going to just let it go and forget.”

Her words must’ve resonated. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. When he opened them again, he lifted his hand to the glass. Sansa pressed her palm to the other side and smiled at how large his hand was compared to hers. Neither spoke for now. Words wouldn’t do the moment justice anyhow. Somethings just couldn’t be spoken.

“I’ll just have to send you more letters and pictures, I suppose,” Sansa finally broke in.

“Yes, you will,” Sandor said matter-of-factly, and the shift in tone served as an appropriate segue to another somber change in his demeanor. “Since you’re here, flesh and blood, I need to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth.”

The look in his eyes bid Sansa’s heart to beat a faster rhythm. “Of course, anything,” she responded on a voice drawn thin.

“I heard there’s been trouble where you live. Something about a girl gone missing and others turning up murdered in nearby towns.”

Sandor evaluated Sansa closely, and she knew he saw the shift in her demeanor as well—the way her back pulled away from the chair, her lips parted, brows furrowed, and perhaps even the fear behind her eyes.

“Yeah, it’s a shame.” Sansa evened out her voice and twirled the phone cord around her finger. “They found the girl from Devil Creek.” 

She dropped her eyes and shook her head at the last bit. Sandor shifted in his seat and cleared his throat.

“I don’t mean to be an asshole, but I don’t care about the other girls in Devil Creek,” he intoned sharply. “I’m asking about you. You haven’t had any problems, have you?”

_Tell him._ Sansa loosed a slow sigh, but wavered. The truth bubbled up at the back of her throat, but she bit her bottom lip and stifled the urge to divulge it all, all the things she’d been holding onto for the sake of others. That brief hesitation was more than enough for Sandor to see right through her. She already knew he was a perceptive man, but his gaze penetrated more than just the glass between them.

“No.” Sansa shook her head. “I just keep my doors locked and my head on a swivel.”

Sandor nodded slowly but kept his eyes steadfast on her. “Remember what I said about bullshitters,” he warned. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” Sansa insisted and fiddled with the strap of her dress. “I’m fine. Nothing has happened.”

He fell silent. The pause felt like an eternity, long enough that Sansa almost lost the battle against coming clean. That was probably the point. The longer the silence stretched on, the more disappointed he appeared.

“We don’t have much time left,” Sandor said and eased back in his seat with one arm crossed over his broad chest. “Look, I hoped that when this day came, I’d have better news for you. I’ll be honest—I don’t know how long I’m gonna be here. Another five years at least. Probably longer on account of the trouble I’ve been in.

“You’re young and you’re beautiful and the last thing I’d ever want is for you to squander your best years waiting on me or whatever it is you’re doing or plan to do. Write as much as you want. Someday they’ll give me your letters again. But I don’t like liars, and I sure as hell don’t lie to myself.”

He hesitated a moment and, though his words possessed a chill, his eyes burned with heat behind them.

“I know what’s coming down the line. You’ll meet a man someday and, if he’s anything like me, he’ll want you all to himself and will want you to snip the heartstrings you’ve wrapped around me.”

Sansa shook her head and clambered for a response, but her chest ached and stomach flipped. “Don’t say that. I’m not going to do that. Don’t push me away.”

“I know you’re not that naïve, Sansa,” Sandor sniped as the cold came over him. “I’m not pushing you away. This is reality, girl, and you’re gonna have to face it. This isn’t gonna work if you go burying your head in the sand when things aren’t so pretty to look at. And my life ain’t pretty.”

The buzzer cut through the air, now thick with tension, and the door slammed open again.

“I gotta go,” Sandor mumbled and matched her eyes. “Any last confessions?”

_Tell him, Sansa._ Her mouth fell open, but the guards spilled in and rounded up the inmates who filed out. Tongue tied and twisted, her mouth couldn’t form the words. _Say it! Tell him!_

“Let’s go!” the guards boomed.

“I…I promise I’ll write,” Sansa stammered. It wasn’t enough. Sandor smirked, but she saw the letdown clear enough on his features and the crestfallen way he nodded. 

“Thanks for coming, little bird.”

Sandor hung up the phone with a frown painting his lips and, when he walked away, Sansa hoped he might look back. He never did. 

* * *

“I hope you slept well,” the motel clerk said because it was the polite thing to say, but he eyed Sansa with a forced smile that meant she looked like she’d had a hell of a night. She had.

Sansa hid behind her sunglasses, hair still drying from the shower, and the humidity would do it no favors today. The ends had already curled. She slathered on just enough makeup to look alive for her evening shift at the diner.

“Yes, thank you,” she lied and handed over the room key.

The place was comfortable enough, despite starchy sheets, a window AC unit that rattled something fierce, and an army of ants that’d invaded the bathroom. None of that mattered. She hardly slept anyhow.

In the postmortem of her visit with Sandor, Sansa had tossed and turned and rehashed the details in her head. The task occupied her well past three in the morning. She’d stared at a water-stained ceiling and with a pit in her stomach that hadn’t departed when she woke after a few hours of sleep.

After Sansa paid for the room, she tossed her bag to the back seat of the car. The sun rose hot today and baked the rain-soaked ground. Steam rose off the cracked asphalt as Sansa pulled out of the motel parking lot and ambled down a two-lane road towards the highway.

Though she’d lied to Rita that her visit had ended nicely and lied to the motel clerk that she rested peacefully, another lie cast a heavy shroud over Sansa. One of the first things Sandor ever told her was that he didn’t like bullshitters and liars. Though she’d only lied to spare him some worry, he had no way of knowing that was the reason. The look he’d given her before he left made that abundantly clear.

On a lonely road leading out of town, Sansa approached the railroad tracks just as the flashing lights and gate came down. A Union Pacific train crawled by at a dawdling pace, slow enough for Sansa to get in her head again with the crux of the matter.

She’d uncovered it in the dead spaces of night that facilitated only two things—troublemaking and self-reflection. Sandor had never lied to her, not even when she asked about his scars. He’d laid bare what she sensed was perhaps the most personal story from his history. When he asked for the truth, Sansa had refused him. Even at face value, she could see the slight.

All night, she’d vacillated between raking herself over the coals for it and accepting it as an inevitable misstep between them. What she knew for certain was that the ending of their conversation had imparted a sick, hollow feeling in her.

She tapped the steering wheel. The car engine hummed. The train rumbled past.

Tuesday morning. He was eligible for a visit on Tuesday morning. _This_ morning.

Rita hadn’t said what time or if he was even allowed back-to-back visits, the logical part of Sansa argued. That same part of her had also argued against writing to Sandor in the first place. It had hailed Joffrey as a prize to be won and sent Sansa down a path of ruin. And she was tired of indulging the logical part that knew little of her heart.

Movement out the driver’s side window drew her eyes to birds perched atop a tattered billboard. The thing was barely discernable with a cross and an effigy of the Virgin Mary long since faded. The sun and rain hadn’t washed away the scripture passage at the bottom that read:

_And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free._

It was a sign. And it was enough.

Sansa threw the car in reverse. She backed onto the shoulder of the road and sped into town towards the prison; far from logic and all the things it’d been telling her to do, and all the ways it ran counter to what her heart wanted. Sansa didn’t believe in signs but knew well enough to heed them.

_Tell him the truth. Set him free._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost, thank you all for the support and love you’ve shown this fic! It truly blows me away. Last chapter was rough, but I hope this one went down a little easier! Thank you again for all the love. It really means a lot to me! 
> 
> See you next week for Sandor’s reaction to Sansa’s visit…and perhaps another surprise he’s not expecting. Next week’s chapter is also one of my favorites (I have seven favorite chapters)! Take care!


	8. Sympathy For The Devil

Morning came with all the tedium Sandor was used to—breakfast, roll call, leisure time, as if he gave a shit about the rehab programs he’d been shoved into. The connection between learning how to paint and write and being a functioning member of society was lost on him. Sandor endured that bullshit with reserved skepticism and only participated if he had to.

Otherwise, he used the time as a well-earned opportunity to daydream about Sansa. Only now, those visions had a flesh and blood tether point to latch onto. And latch he did; all night envisioning those plump, pouty lips around the tip of his cock or breathing his name as he lavished kisses against her long, graceful neck.

In the library, Sandor cracked open a book to occupy himself. The spine hadn’t been broken in and he didn’t know what the damn thing was even about. The dust jacket was missing, so it was anyone’s guess, but the words on the page were a blur anyhow. He read them, but the meaning didn’t register as his thoughts all flowed back to her. Always back to her.

Chatter broke amongst the guards who stood watch at the library doors. When Sandor lifted his gaze, Boros stared daggers right through him and turned that unusual shade of crimson he reserved only for Sandor. _Son of a bitch._

With his nose splint finally off and his ribs healing up nicely, or so the prison doc said, Sandor was almost put back to rights. Almost. Boros seemed to have expected more; an epic downfall perhaps, spiraling towards black oblivion of endless rage and time tacked onto his sentence. Whatever Boros had hoped for, he’d squandered his opportunity to make it a reality.

Sandor wasn’t stupid, though, and he knew he’d pay for Sansa’s visit yesterday. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but Boros had a way of consuming Sandor’s only joys here and a visit from Sansa was high on that list. So high, in fact, it caused another uproar at dinner last night with flung food and swinging fists. An angel like Sansa Stark didn’t belong in a place like this and, as much as Sandor wanted every bit of her, their interactions carried a price.

A guard cut across the library, weaving in between tables where inmates read in silence but watched and waited for whoever was on the receiving end of this sudden attention. Nothing good ever came from it. Men plucked from leisure time usually had something to answer for.

At the back of the library, Sandor kept his head down and feigned sudden interest in the book but, as the guard passed each table, it became apparent who he was after.

The man hovered in front of Sandor and stared through a frigid gaze. “You have a visitor.”

“Fuck off,” Sandor grumbled and gripped the book. His mood soured because only on extraordinarily rare occasions did the warden allow back-to-back visits.

“Suit yourself,” the guard huffed on a derisive exhale. “It’d be a shame to waste twenty minutes with that pretty little redhead.”

_Sansa._

Sandor’s gaze snapped to the man. He flipped the book shut and stood from his seat so abruptly that it slammed into the wall behind him. The commotion attracted the attention of the room. Sandor didn’t give a shit about disturbing the silence and certainly didn’t care about prying eyes that followed him across the library and to the door.

He trailed behind the guard with all his faculties now singularly focused. His pulse quickened and senses heightened with adrenaline. The skeptical part of him warned that this was a joke, another orchestrated stunt to send him over the edge and back to the gray palace. He’d emerged from there with his sanity and spirit intact, a feat he was rather proud of and only accomplished with a regimented schedule he’d created for himself. Sandor knew well enough he wouldn’t be so lucky a second time around, so he steeled himself the best he could as he approached the visitation room.

The guard swiped his badge, and the thick metal door buzzed before swinging open.

“Station three,” the man grunted. “You’ve got twenty minutes.”

Sandor slowly crossed the threshold and glowered at the guard with an unspoken threat burning in his eyes. Though he was still half-certain this was a setup, his heart raced as he passed station one. He put some rigor in his step past station two but held his breath and dropped his eyes to the floor.

At station three, he lifted his gaze.

Sandor couldn’t help the sigh that eased from his lips. Sure enough, Sansa sat on the other side of the glass but shot from her seat when he appeared.

Yesterday, the girl had arrived with cookies and all dolled up in a nice blue dress; as pure as the driven snow and sweet as the breath of spring that follows. She was stunning, no doubt, but today she’d come stripped bare—cut-off shorts showcasing toned thighs, a sheer white tank top with thin straps, her hair in mussed up waves, and less makeup too.

The presentation enticed in an entirely different way, and Sandor marveled at the chameleon quality of her sexiness. He could dress the girl in a paper bag, and she’d turn heads like nothing else. Something in the simplicity today knocked him off his feet, speechless as he sat down and watched the way her shorts rode dangerously high up her thighs as she resumed her seat.

Sandor snatched the phone from the wall and, once more, Sansa followed his lead. Even in the dingy fluorescent light, he could see the outline of her bra through her shirt, the swell of cleavage, and her nipples hard.

“I take it yesterday wasn’t enough for you,” he murmured with a raspy chuckle into the phone.

“No, it wasn’t.”

Sansa stared Sandor dead in the eye and responded with deliberate certainty that would send him through the fucking ceiling. She meant it too. Even her courtesies were stripped away, but what was left behind was far from bullshit—only raw sincerity that was bound to drive him absolutely wild.

“Me neither.” Sandor eased back in his seat with a satisfied smile and stretched his legs in front of him.

She wasn’t the only one deliberately casting her net of allure. Sandor was well aware of the way Sansa eyed him through the glass; the way her lips parted as her gaze settled on his broad chest and the bulk of his arms now resting behind his head with the phone held precariously to his ear.

“You gonna ask if I slept well last night?” his voice rumbled, and he imagined she liked that too given the slow, deep inhale she took. Flustered, her lashes fluttered as her eyes darted over him. She bit down on the fullness of her bottom lip.

“Did you?” Sansa implored with somber concern, blithely unaware of the trap he’d laid. The poor thing walked right into it. She leaned forward and her brows drew together with preemptive sympathy. On full display, her tits rested atop her forearm on the counter.

“Like a rock.” Sandor winked, and his tongue slowly traced the corner of his mouth. “Looks like I will again tonight.”

His gaze drifted to her breasts and lingered long enough to dispel any confusion about what he meant. Understanding bloomed over Sansa’s pretty face. Her blue eyes widened as she stood at the crossroads of being simultaneously scandalized and tantalized.

When he wondered what path she might choose, Sansa’s lips, perfectly pink and so ripe for the taking, curled in a smile he wouldn’t soon forget. With innocence gleaming in her eyes and seduction resting on that gorgeous mouth, Sandor was intoxicated with both. 

“We don’t have long so listen to me,” she said and once more matched his gaze with all the resolve she’d showed up with today. “I needed to come back because yesterday I didn’t tell you the truth.”

When she paused and searched his eyes, Sandor saw clearly enough the contrition in her. He knew what it meant to lay awake with regret and carry it day after day, year after year. Where Sandor had been mostly disappointed that she’d lied to him yesterday, he found himself enraptured now that she’d come here just for this.

He sat up and scooted his chair towards the counter. “I know you didn’t. You’re a terrible liar, little bird, and I think you know it.”

The girl wasn’t that hard to read. Every damn thing surfaced on her face that betrayed her emotions. She’d give herself away time and time again. The only thing worse than a liar was a fool, and Sansa wasn’t that. She seemed to know herself well enough to understand she couldn’t get much past him, and that bit of self-awareness captivated him now too.

Sandor contemplated her through the glass and Sansa shifted closer as if she wanted to crawl right through. A smirk played on his lips at the thought and must’ve encouraged her to speak again.

“I don’t want to lie to you, and I shouldn’t have,” she intoned with another wave of contrition disproportionate to the offense. “I came because I wanted to see you again and because I want to tell you the truth. You deserve to know.”

Sandor leaned forward and his chest pressed against the edge of the counter. “I’m listening.”

That truth came in a deluge, like a levee breaking and there was no sense in trying to slow it down. Sansa talked a mile a minute with animated urgency that said she not only withheld this from him, but from everyone. This wasn’t some rehearsed monologue meant to placate. This was the kind of honesty that bid her to stumble over her words and reveal things she might not have otherwise. And where at first Sandor was in raptures over the way she talked, her beauty, her body, every movement she made that he couldn’t quite get enough of, the truth of the situation was ugly.

Sansa relayed the newspaper headlines of missing girls who’d turned up dead, most in pieces and brutalized in ways she wouldn’t repeat, but Sandor had been in this hellhole long enough to know the disgusting atrocities men were capable of.

That wasn’t what sent his blood boiling, fists clenching hard, and fingernails digging into his palms. He didn’t care about other women. He cared about her. Those headlines hit close to Sansa with midnight calls that taunted her and a stranger who’d come to Devil Creek. He’d showed up at the diner and at one of her Saturday night gigs. For the first time in ages, Sandor felt helpless and where that might make some folk sad or angsty, it only infuriated him.

When she finished, Sansa looked no better for the confession. On the verge of tears, her skin paled with terror. She clutched the phone with both hands and peered through the glass expectantly.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Sandor demanded on a gruff exhale, and his mouth twitched in misplaced agitation. “I know people on the outside who can help, who can look after you, Sansa. I would’ve sent them to you in a heartbeat.”

Sandor had long ago accepted his fate here. With no family or woman to worry after, something in his lonely existence absolved him from the rage he saw in other inmates; the way they regarded the shackles and bars with abject fury and longing for what existed on the other side. It wasn’t just freedom those men were after. 

His breaths quickened and Sandor eyed the plexiglass with new empathy and fresh knowledge of what those men grappled with. He’d burn the entire place to the ground and pay whatever price that carried if it meant getting the fuck out of here and handling this situation. 

Sansa must’ve seen clear enough the anger rolling off of him. Her head tilted and concern pooled in her eyes as she scrambled to gentle his rage.

“The only reason I didn’t tell you is because I don’t want you to worry about me,” she soothed with calm insistence. “I didn’t want to put that burden on you when you’ve already suffered so much in here. That was the only reason, Sandor.”

Strange serenity washed over him, and anger took the knee. He stared at her through the glass and, though his frustration at being separated remained, Sansa seemed to recognize the origins of his agitation.

“I’ve known plenty of burden in my life. You’re not it,” Sandor corrected, and Sansa nodded. “You have no idea who might be calling? What about that dip-shit you were engaged to?”

Sansa mulled it over, but ultimately shook her head. “I don’t think so. He wouldn’t spend all this time and effort just to intimidate me. He never tried to contact me after I left him. It’s been over a year, so why now? I’m sure he’s long moved on.”

Sandor observed the worry still lingering on Sansa’s face and the way she self-soothed with rose-colored hopefulness. He couldn’t quite fault her. She’d found a way to cope, and this was apparently it.

“I want you to stay with someone else,” he insisted and his firmness—the way he wasn’t taking no for an answer though he couldn’t do shit to enforce it—drew Sansa’s eyes. “That friend of yours. Janet. I want you to stay with her.”

Sansa broke with laughter. It drifted merrily through the line and Sandor relished the sound of it and the way she lit up from within.

“Jeyne,” she corrected.

Her bright smile wasn’t about his unintended humor. It was that someone in this world gave a shit about her. He didn’t doubt her friends cared, but Sandor’s concern for her was hardly platonic, and Sansa seemed to cherish that difference.

With the mood hoisted up and floating on levity, Sandor allowed a soft breath of laughter to pass his lips.

“Jeyne. Janet. I don’t care if it’s Janis Joplin’s fucking ghost. I don’t want you alone in your house, unprotected.”

“I can protect myself.” Sansa lifted her chin slightly and squared her shoulders, beaming with self-pride that Sandor admired in other contexts, but not this.

“No,” he rasped and shook his head with finality that Sansa also seemed to enjoy if the coy little smile on her lips meant anything. “We’re not going down that path of bra-burning bullshit. You’re obviously a strong woman. I get it, but now’s not the time to be stubborn. I need you to listen to me.”

Her smile spread and she bit her bottom lip once more. “I don’t burn my bras.” One of her brow’s lifted suggestively.

“I wouldn’t care if you did. Frankly, I like the thought of you without a bra.” Sandor’s gaze fell to her breasts again and he couldn’t help the image of them bouncing, his hands cupping them, and his dick nestled between. “You get my point.”

She flashed that same innocent little smile again and the enthralled glint behind her eyes spoke on her behalf. Sandor read between her lines both forwards and backwards just fine.

Sansa liked when a man took control. And she could wax poetic all day about women’s rights, and Sandor loved women. It wasn’t about that. It was about Sansa knowing damn well he could fuck her good and right and make her feel like a woman—cherished and looked after, protected and loved. And for his part, he’d know she’d keep coming back for more because all those women talking wild about liberation still wanted a real man to fuck them senseless. For Sansa, he’d gladly be that real man.

With his cock half hard at the thought, Sandor shifted in his seat. He leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees that struggled to fit under the counter.

“Look, my good friend Clyde is the sheriff in Cactus. I’m gonna have him check up on you. I’ll see what else he can do; maybe convince your town’s sheriff to get off his ass and take this seriously. Until then, I want you to stay at Janet’s.”

Sansa nodded with a soft smile, and the tension in her shoulders seemed to ease. “I will. I’m sorry I lied to you.”

Sandor stared at her from beneath his brows and lowered his voice to a deep grumble. “You’ll just have to make it up to me some time.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Sansa asked on a quiet breath, almost a sigh, and tossed her hair over her shoulder, exposing the bare skin there and licked her bottom lip in some bid to drive him straight into insanity with how fucking effortlessly sexy she was.

Sandor wasn’t sure if Sansa knew what she was doing and, apparently, she wanted an actual answer, so he settled back with a smirk and gave her one.

“On your knees. That’s how most people ask for forgiveness.”

Her mouth dropped open and, for a moment, he thought he might’ve gone too far, but she smiled with her own brand of gentle mischief. It knocked away all that flimsy affront shielding deep desire and intense intrigue.

“Of course. It’d be bad manners not to.” Her smile faded as she gazed at him from beneath dark, thick lashes.

Sandor’s jaw clenched, and a throaty groan vibrated in his throat. “I swear to God, girl, if it weren’t for this glass…” he warned as all his muscles seemed to tense at once.

“Then what?” Her brow lifted with curiosity as she danced dangerously close to the edge of indecency but did so with all her grace and poise. The combination of sweet and sultry was pure torture.

“You know exactly what,” Sandor murmured and leaned towards the glass as he spoke low and slow. “I’d bend you over that counter, spread your pretty legs, and have you begging for a whole lot more than just forgiveness.”

“I believe you.” The pink blush burning on her cheeks spread down her chest that now rapidly rose and fell as if she were breathless. “Though I might have to see it before I believe it,” she teased.

Sandor nodded, and a wicked grin creased his lips.

“Well, sometimes you only see things when you believe in them enough. So, when you get home, you think it over good and hard with your hands between your legs and maybe you can manifest my freedom and I’ll come lend you a hand and a few other things.”

“I’ll see what I can conjure up,” Sansa said through another shy smile, though her eyes gleamed with delight. “Until then, you have some making up to do too.”

Sandor crossed one arm over his chest, and a rough laugh escaped him. “Is that right? And I suppose you want me to earn my forgiveness in the same way?”

Sansa said nothing, only nodded with a doe-eyed gaze and those plush lips subtly pouting and begging to be nipped and kissed and would look so perfectly sweet wrapped around his cock.

“I don’t ever need a reason to return the favor,” he fired back with renewed fervor. “I’ll bury my face between your legs just because it’s a Tuesday and I feel like it.”

Few things inspired him like the thought of his tongue sweeping between her folds until she writhed and lost herself in the pleasure and attention he’d lavish there. Half hard before, his cock strained against his jumpsuit bottoms now.

“You gonna tell me what I did?” he groaned with arousal and frustration both on the rise because where there was one, there was usually the other and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it now.

“You never told me you were a bull rider.”

Sandor drew in a long breath and nodded. He figured the time would come when she’d either figure it out or he’d tell her. He’d made a name for himself only to find he preferred obscurity. While two years at war hadn’t been enough to buy the anonymity back, he’d hoped five years in prison just might.

“It never came up in conversation,” Sandor replied and hoped it’d suffice, but Sansa shot him a pointed look that even plexiglass couldn’t guard against. 

“Yes,” he relented with a sigh. “I was but then the draft man came, and you know the rest. You gonna go on about me being a _real_ cowboy now?”

He meant it as a subtle jab at her ideals he sensed had already long been shattered. What Sansa was really after was a true man—not those turquoise and silver-gilded assholes who rode mechanical bulls on the weekend and called themselves a cowboy. She wanted grit and muscle, simplicity and strength. A real cowboy, she called it.

“No. I already suspected you were.”

Her sincerity revealed itself again, and Sandor knew this wasn’t some false compliment meant to stroke his ego. That wasn’t the part he wanted stroked anyhow. Before they met, Sandor had worried if Sansa would see him for who he was or if she’d adorn him with some applique of the man she wanted.

Those worries washed away now. Sandor’s lips curled with a faint smile, just as adoring as it was lustful, and he hoped she’d know the difference.

“I’ll give you a ride and you can see for yourself. How’s that for reparation?”

“That sounds more than fair,” she breathed with wistful distraction. 

Her fingers mindlessly traced her collarbone, and Sandor found himself mesmerized by the way she touched herself.

“From now on, we tell each other the truth,” he murmured, only half hearing himself speak as he watched her closely. Their eyes flicked up one another’s form, drinking in the sight and gathering all they could with the time they had left.

“Deal,” she whispered as her eyes drifted over him.

Sandor scooted close to the glass, and she did the same. In a moment of simple intimacy, the only kind that their predicament allowed, Sansa and Sandor contemplated one another. Neither spoke, and the reverence somehow communicated more because of the silence.

When she rested her forehead against the glass, he did too, and where she held her palm up, his hand curled in a fist that gently pounded against the glass in one soft tap. Her longing and his frustration eased through on either side.

The buzzer sounded. Their time was done. They both pulled away from the glass but, locked at the eyes, neither moved other than the congruent smiles that peeled at the corner of both their mouths.

“Do you really have to go?” Sansa whispered as inmates filed past Sandor.

“Looks like it. I wanna watch you walk away,” he muttered so the others might not hear, though the room was almost empty now. 

“Why?” Sansa asked, dulcet and dreamy and looking at him in a way no woman ever had.

“You know damn well why. Call it inspiration for my bedtime ritual,” he said on a deep, rasping laugh that faded into tenderness.

After they said their goodbyes, Sandor stood. He hung up the phone and bent over slightly with two balled fists resting on the counter.

Good Texas girl that she was, Sansa obeyed, walking slow and swinging her hips. Long legs disappeared beneath denim shorts that barely covered that delicious ass of hers, just enough to hold on to for fucking her on all fours and licking her from behind.

Sandor drew a deep breath and chewed his bottom lip hard. Sansa turned around just before leaving the room. For her own enjoyment, he stood with his manhood painfully hard and in dire need of some attention. Her lips fell open slightly and eyes widened at the sight of his full-length straining against his pants, and maybe it attached new meaning to his statement that he made up for his scars in ways that mattered.

If he had to suffer from anticipation and frustration in here, she’d do some suffering too. Sandor reached down and gripped his cock to adjust it against the waistband. In doing so, he pulled his bottoms down just enough to reveal the tip of his dick that he stroked with his thumb, circling the seeping wetness with one quick swipe. He pulled his pants up, gave her a wink and a smile, and walked away, leaving sweet Sansa Stark blushing and probably soaking wet between the legs.

* * *

Out in the yard, a wall of heat beat at Sandor’s back with the sun blistering in the clear sky, no clouds for reprieve. The upside—most of the others in his recreation block opted to stay indoors. Only a handful of other inmates dedicated themselves to outdoor time the way Sandor did. Rain or shine, if he had the opportunity, he’d be out here.

His t-shirt hung on the pull up bars he’d made good use of. Sandor breathed through another round of push-ups. His palms warmed against the scorching asphalt. Through clenched teeth he pressed on, anything to burn up the frustration still roiling through his veins. Even after he’d stroked himself slow and hard yesterday morning after Sansa left, the desire still raged in him and kept him up well into the early morning hours today.

If he couldn’t fuck it out, he’d sweat it out, and the plan was going well until something blotted out the sun and cast a long shadow across the ground in front of him.

Sandor pushed himself up and settled back on his knees. The warden loomed above him with both hands firmly on his hips. The man squinted against the sun and, whether or not he intended it, he appeared displeased.

“What do you want?” Sandor panted. Beads of sweat ran down his bare chest and he swiped at his brow.

The warden’s jaw set firm with a scowl and he paused a moment, eyes trained on Sandor with quiet warning.

“Someone should’ve beat some manners into you, boy. Get up.”

Sandor eased from the ground and snatched up his t-shirt. He pulled it on as he followed the warden inside and wracked his head for what trouble he might be in now. He’d paid his dues in solitary and had stayed in line since coming out. He hadn’t even mouthed off to Boros, who’d been doling out verbal blows left and right.

Through a series of secured entrances, Sandor trailed after the warden down the sterile corridors and past doors that all looked the same. How anyone navigated this labyrinth was beyond Sandor. Eventually, the halls bore some modicum of familiarity just in time for the warden to lead the way into his office. One chair at his desk was already occupied.

Sandor stopped two steps in the door. His lawyer swiveled around in the chair and nearly upended the open briefcase on his lap. The warden gestured for Sandor to sit.

When he did, the room went quiet and Sandor crossed his arms over his chest, fully prepared for this conversation to head south. He’d rather get this shit over with and almost said as much, but the warden abruptly shattered the silence.

“I don’t know who you’ve been praying to, but your parole was granted.”

The warden and Sandor’s lawyer stared at him, both waiting on bated breath for his response. Maybe they expected him to break down in tears or fall to his knees and thank the good Lord. He hadn’t prayed to anyone. The only thing Sandor had done was insist Sansa take those slender fingers of hers and slide them inside of herself with him on her mind. Apparently, it worked.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t pray.

Instead, Sandor’s head fell back, and delighted laughter poured from his mouth. Maybe Sansa had some divine influence after all, coming so hard that God himself must’ve heard and done something about it. And though Sandor wasn’t a man of God, he’d worship between her legs with the same delirious vigor and wild veneration as all those other religious zealots. Only difference, he’d have a better time of it.

“Ah fuck,” Sandor sighed on dying laughter that left the warden unamused and the lawyer stupefied. “Dare I ask how this happened?”

The warden nodded but took tremendous time in opening his desk drawer and stuffing tobacco into his pipe before lighting it. He finally spoke between puffs.

“You’re a smart man, Beric Dondarrion is a lunatic, and Boros is a shithead who I’ve had my eye on for a while and who I know damn well has some sort of hold on Dondarrion. That equation doesn’t add up to you scooping out someone’s eye so close to getting paroled. I told your board as much. They took my word for it and agreed.”

Smile wiped clean, Sandor let the information seep in, filling up all the cracks of disbelief and all the ways he’d been refusing to accept that this was even possible.

“Thank you, sir,” he breathed with astonishment that softened the warden some. The man lifted his hand and waved away the gratitude.

“Save it. You and I both know that you don’t belong here. You never did.”

“What are the terms?” Sandor asked.

The warden motioned to Sandor’s lawyer, who looked small and scared in a suit two sizes too big for his scrawny frame. The man glanced at Sandor from behind coke-bottle glasses that he nervously pushed back up his nose.

“It’s all in here.” He handed Sandor a stack of papers lined up neatly and clipped together. “It’s very standard. Don’t break the law, meet periodically with your parole officer. The biggest point to note—you cannot leave Texas for a year.”

“I don’t wanna leave Texas,” Sandor muttered and took the papers from his lawyer. The exchange solidified the reality. It sunk deeper into Sandor and a smile spread across his lips. He shook his head in languid wonderment. 

“Then it won’t be a problem,” his lawyer commented and latched his briefcase. “Don’t violate your parole terms and you’ll be fine.”

The man stood from the chair. He shook the warden’s hand and then Sandor’s with stilted rigidity he still hadn’t shed after all these years.

“Congratulations. If you have any questions, call my office.”

With a stiff bow, the lawyer smoothed down his suit jacket and retreated from the room. The warden stood as well and reached into his desk drawer where he produced a pair of folded jeans still bearing a belt and buckle, a white t-shirt, a pair of well-worn boots, and a wallet.

The warden dropped the bundle of items on his desk. The belt buckle clattered against the wood and the boots hit with a hard thud.

“Griff’s waiting for you,” he informed and motioned to his office door where a guard hovered outside. “Go change and get the fuck out of my prison.”

Sandor didn’t have to be told twice. He gathered up his belongings and spared no parting words for the warden, only a nod of appreciation that the warden returned.

“Oh, and deal with those nightmares,” the warden hollered after him in an afterthought, though no less important with weight behind his words. “They don’t go away on their own.”

Sandor glanced back only momentarily and swore he spotted a barely discernible smile on the man who turned away to puff his pipe.

A guard led Sandor to a private bathroom, a luxury he hadn’t had in five long years. Sandor stripped out of his jumpsuit, and it might as well have been a ritual of shedding his skin and being born anew. He unfolded the faded Levis he’d worn when he walked through the doors here in handcuffs. On the toilet seat, Sandor sat and ran his thumb over the swirling pattern of his father’s silver belt buckle.

A handful of moments in a man’s life truly mattered. The rest were just a blur of bullshit or tedium or something in between. Like everyone else, Sandor had surrendered entire epochs of his life to the oblivion of lost memories; years’ worth of things he said or did that he’d never remember.

But, even now, in this bathroom with its yellowed floor and half-burnt out fluorescent lights, Sandor knew this memory would count. He would remember this moment as he stood and eased into his jeans. He’d savor the feel of his boots that fit his feet like a glove. He’d relish gaining his identity back with something as simple as a white t-shirt that he tugged on now.

When he left the bathroom and the jumpsuit crumpled on the floor, Sandor left five years of his life behind; five years he’d never get back. He emerged in the inmate release area no longer just a number—inmate 131906—but himself again.

A nice woman dealt with his paperwork and handed off a bag with the belongings from his cell. With a knowing look, she commented on Sansa Stark, who’d brought cookies for the office ladies. Apparently, those ladies told the warden about Sansa. Sandor smiled at the sound of her name and signed his way to freedom.

The fervor set in, the indelible fear that something would go wrong—they had the wrong inmate or that the parole board might change their mind in the eleventh hour—and yet again Sandor would have years of his life taken from him with no recourse to gain them back.

His boots stomped down the hall to the waiting area. The cadence was music to his ears with the way the heels cracked against the tile. A guard let Sandor through a set of double doors where Griff waited on the other side and paced a hole through the floor.

Sandor bounded through in heavy steps that drew Griff’s gaze and put an abrupt end to his pacing. A smile erupted across the man’s mouth and even lifted his white mustache to reveal a row of equally white teeth.

“No flowers?” Sandor barked and held his arms out at his sides.

Griff appraised him with a glimmer of glee behind his eyes and a slow nod. “I like the new look.”

“It ain’t new. It’s reclaimed,” Sandor chuckled and patted Griff on the back. He started for the doors but eased his steps to a dawdling pace to savor every second of this moment.

“Got any goodbyes you need to give?” Griff glanced at Sandor as they hovered in front of the glass door leading to a crystal-clear day outside.

“Nope.” Sandor pushed into the balmy afternoon. He closed his eyes and drew a deep inhale with the sun seeping into his skin. Whereas before it burned, now it was a warm reprieve from years out in the cold.

Though he had already breathed this same air, the breeze felt softer, a gentle caress against his skin, and smelled sweeter with fresh-cut grass and warmed dirt. Sandor opened his eyes again and strode in step with Griff down the long walkway to the parking lot.

Griff wrapped his arm around Sandor’s shoulders and, in a rare show of outward elation, belted out a joyous chuckle before releasing his hold on Sandor.

As if the stars themselves aligned for this moment, Boros stood at the end of the walkway, smoking a cigarette and scratching his ass, but whipped around at the sound of Sandor and Griff’s boots colliding against the pavement in pounding unison.

“Small world,” Sandor growled as he passed Boros whose cigarette tumbled from his mouth and his eyes damn near popped out of his head. “I’m sure I’ll see ya around.”

With the grim threat, Sandor spat at Boros’s feet and kept walking.

“Your day of reckoning is coming,” Griff warned and spat at Boros as well.

At Griff’s beat up two-toned Chevy pickup, Sandor eased into the passenger seat with levity he hadn’t felt since he was a child, probably well before Gregor set ruin to his face. Griff climbed in and reached behind Sandor’s seat. In a celebratory move, he handed over Sandor’s prized black Stetson.

Sandor took the hat and admired the feel of the leather against the pads of his fingertips. He turned his eyes out the windshield. It felt as though a crushing weight was lifted from his shoulders and he relished the feeling of release he’d never quite known in his lifetime, not even after he was shipped back home from war.

“I’ll take you back to Cactus then I reckon you’re off to Devil Creek,” Griff asked more than said but smirked in a way that intimated he already had the answer.

In a ritual of putting himself back to rights, Sandor placed the hat on his head and pulled down the brim to secure it in place until he felt whole again.

“You reckon right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FREEEEEEEDDDDDDDDOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!! BE FREE, SANDOR!!!!!!! Frolic in the fields of freedom (maybe get your ass to Devil Creek first)! Ah sweet freedom! 
> 
> I have been waiting patiently to get to this chapter! I consider this sort of like closing the first act of the story. YAYYYY! And he got his hat back! And he and Sansa had a nice little chat! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and for the support! I am grateful to you all and it makes me so happy to be able to share this story with you and hopefully brighten your week a bit in these wild times! So much love to everyone! Stay safe and take care. See you next week!


	9. Simple Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone for such an amazing reception to last chapter! I was absolutely blown away and cannot thank you enough! I’m so excited for this next phase of the story. I hope you enjoy! Big shout out to ShadesOfPemberley for the Peter Steele edit in the pic set!

“Looks like you still got the touch,” Bronn commented from an aluminum lawn chair conveniently placed in the shadow of the afternoon sun. From his spot, he twirled the radio antenna in slow circles until the static faded and a tune lilted from the worn-out speaker.

Sandor peered at Bronn from beneath his F-150’s hood. “Don’t bet on it too soon,” he warned. “You’ll jinx it.”

Bronn hadn’t changed much since Sandor had been gone; all but his wardrobe. It was a wonder that his balls hadn’t flopped out of the Kelly-green shorts he wore, and that might’ve been distracting if it weren’t for the tube socks pulled up to his knees. Then there were his Adidas basketball shoes, though Bronn hadn’t taken up the sport.

Sandor wiped his hands on the front of his white t-shirt and ambled to the open garage where he plucked a tool from his toolbox.

Distraction was exactly what he needed, and Bronn had delivered in spades with jokes and memories from their past. Sandor laughed along, but with frustration on the rise, he twitched at the thought of Sansa and decided it best not to dwell.

On the way back to the truck, Sandor lifted one curious brow at Bronn and motioned to the man’s garish outfit. “Question for you. Why the fuck are you wearing hotpants?”

Bronn pushed his aviator sunglasses to the top of his head and evaluated his outfit.

“They’re not hotpants. You were gone five years, brother. Times change. This is what people wear now.”

Sandor’s eyes flicked over Bronn once more with a shit-eating grin. “It’s what city folk wear. You a city boy now?”

He ducked beneath the truck’s hood just as Bronn fired back in playful protest.

“It’s summer! I’d rather wear this than sweat to death in jeans and boots.” He cast a cutting look at Sandor, who sweltered in the heat, though he’d be loath to admit it now. “Soon you’ll be wearing these too.”

“The hell I will!” Sandor hollered as if the vehemence might reach into his future and snuff out the possibility of him ever sporting such a horrendous get-up.

With his hands resting behind his head, Bronn settled back in the webbed lawn chair and flipped his sunglasses back in place. “Suit yourself. If that’s the hill you wanna die on…”

“It is. And you can bury me on that hill because over my cold, dead body is how you’ll ever get me in an outfit like that.”

Bronn erupted with laughter, the knee-slapping kind that died off on a loud sigh and unspoken fondness. “Ah, see. I missed you.”

“So you say, hotpants,” Sandor chuckled and loosened a bolt beneath the hood.

He’d missed his friend too and might’ve said so, but the task at hand was thieving the high spirits he’d found. His truck was too young to be this broken down, but he couldn’t expect much from the thing. It’d been sitting idle for five years other than Bronn taking it for a spin around the block a few times to keep the parts oiled. Apparently, the man had stopped doing that altogether at some point. Sandor arrived home to his black truck covered in a layer of pollen and dust and refusing to start.

Prior to that, the drive from Wichita Falls to Cactus had whipped by like a fever dream of colors Sandor swore he’d never seen before. The wildflowers burst in near-psychedelic vividness and the Texas sky dwarfed a long flat horizon. Sandor had spent most of the ride lost in a daze and coming down from adrenaline that left him both enthralled and exhausted in equal and ardent measure. 

Freedom felt like waking up from a dream and, once the stupor lifted and Sandor landed in town, the full force of reality rolled in as swift and brutal as the storms that swept across the plains. For long years, he had fantasized about the moment he’d cross back into Cactus and pick up his life where he’d left it. The manifestation of those daydreams lacked the details he now faced. Those weren’t so glamorous—an expired license and registration, unpaid bills, and now a truck sitting useless in his driveway.

It never quite occurred to Sandor that he’d only pressed pause on his life, but the world had moved on and it wasn’t so simple as walking back into the existence he’d left behind. He had five years’ worth of catching up to do, racing to close the distance all while shouldering the expectation to assimilate. The endeavor overwhelmed. In some bout of absolute insanity, he craved the simplicity of the life he’d left behind.

_You’ll just have to make it that way for yourself,_ he’d reasoned and sent the foul notion packing to some dark recess of his mind.

Sandor lifted the tan leather Stetson from his head and swiped the sweat from his brow. One bright spot he hadn’t accounted for was rediscovering his belongings—clothes, books, records, and all the other carefully curated pieces of his life. He’d been quick to reclaim his boots and hats, relishing in his own simple and rugged style, although apparently the city boys still glommed onto some bastardized version of it. He reckoned that was better than hotpants.

Sandor retreated to the garage once more and squatted to the ground where he sifted through his toolbox for a socket.

“You know, in another life, you could’ve been one hell of a mechanic,” Bronn hollered and kicked up his feet on the cooler. “Speaking of, what are you gonna do now? I can’t imagine you’ll go back to bull riding.”

Another thing that hadn’t changed—when Sandor worked on his truck, Bronn wasn’t good for much other than company and occasionally handing off tools. The man knew the difference between a socket and a torque wrench and had a hell of a sense of humor. For Sandor, that was enough for Bronn to earn his keep. If it were anyone else, the annoyance might drive him up a wall, through the ceiling of his patience, and straight into irritation.

Sandor grabbed a socket from his toolbox and fetched his beer from the ground. Bottle to his lips, he pondered the question and took a swig of what he knew damn well was piss water passing as beer. It was cold enough to suffice and his palate was too unaccustomed to alcohol to glean much difference between this swill and liquid gold.

He wandered out to the driveway and contemplated the oak tree growing tall and proud in his front yard and casting its shadow over the house.

Sandor shook his head. “Nope, not back to bull riding. I buried that in the past where it belongs and don’t intend to dig it back up.”

The easier question to answer was what he _didn’t_ want to do. He’d lived the life of a bull rider and it ran its course, weaving a path that ultimately brought him too close to his brother. Living parallel lives was bad enough, but as those lines had turned towards one another, Sandor saw the writing on the wall. Eventually, their paths would’ve crossed, and he’d have seen that son-of-a-bitch again.

He set the bottle to the ground and returned to his truck where he wrenched a bolt free and released a heavy sigh. Staring down the big decisions too long only left Sandor drowning in the immense and near-crushing desire to get back on his feet. He didn’t like depending on people and certainly not the parole officer to which he’d be assigned; some asshole who’d shove him into a shitty job or rehab program where he’d have to sort through all the loose ends of his new life.

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” Sandor grumbled with a foul mood on the rise. “I’ll sort it out as it comes.”

_Just keep busy. And don’t think about it._ He steered clear of unsavory thoughts and poured his attention back into the engine block and the sound of Bronn’s voice over the radio.

“You’ll always have a job at the bar if you want it.”

As Sandor willed the deftness back into his out-of-work hands, he could hear Bronn’s sincerity clear as a bell.

“Even after all that trouble I caused?” he asked on a raspy laugh and only now, looking in from the outside and through a rearview mirror, did Sandor find a shred of humor in the whole situation.

“I figure it’s the least I can do on account of you letting me stay here all these years.” Bronn downed the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle to the thick blanket of grass next to him. “My point is I’d be happy to have you back.”

Sandor loosened another bolt but eyed his house—an old brick home passed down through his family. It wasn’t much, but it was his and fit his life just fine. What it lacked in bells and whistles, it made up for in a big front yard and sturdy craftsmanship scarce these days. And where Bronn had done a piss-poor job of taking care of Sandor’s truck, the man had minded the house with obvious attention.

“I’ll take you up on it as soon as I get things settled,” Sandor replied, but once more scooted around the obvious and the only reason he was still in Cactus right now. “How is the bar? I meant to ask.”

He’d meant to ask a great many things. He’d come back with high hopes of cutting up with Bronn and having one of those deep, insightful talks with Griff where hours slipped by in the blink of an eye. Those things had taken the back seat to more pressing matters.

“Same, I suppose.” Bronn gave a shrug, and, in a rare show of thoughtfulness, he seemed to search for his words before starting again. “Father Bill has provided some interesting inventory from Mexico.”

An irreverent breath passed Sandor’s lips and he shook his head. He’d never met Father Bill, only heard about him periodically over the years. Bronn spoke about the man on hushed tones and talked cryptically around dealings that sounded not quite legal. Sandor assumed the man was more legend than flesh and blood.

Bronn swore that Father Bill’s business was merely importing mezcal with worms or scorpions or other odd creatures at the bottom that the bolder customers chased after. That seemed hardly worth the cloak-and-dagger shit Father Bill espoused. Coincidentally, since knowing Father Bill, Bronn seemed to have picked up a fair bit of knowledge about ayahuasca and the visions it brought forth.

Sandor paused his ministrations momentarily and pulled his head out from under the hood to point the socket wrench at Bronn.

“I’ll tell you one thing—you best land on the right side of the law because if you think those scales of justice are calibrated fairly, you’re a bigger fool than I’ve pegged you for all these years.”

When Bronn fell silent, Sandor let the matter go and scooped out what he hoped was the dead part causing all the trouble beneath the hood.

What satisfaction and sense of accomplishment he might’ve garnered from this minor success landed hollow as he blazed the trail right towards solemn frustration. If he thought of it too long, it’d burn him up, so he busied his hands again and did the best with his mind in the meantime.

The endeavor was invariably useless, and his thoughts ultimately funneled back to one place.

Sansa.

Like a beacon of light in the dead of night, Sandor had been singularly dedicated to getting ahold of her. With foolhardy anticipation that veered dangerously close to giddiness, he’d phoned her the second he waltzed through the door of his house. He’d spared only enough time to toss Bronn an emphatic greeting and to thank Griff for coming to fetch him.

She hadn’t answered the call.

That first night, he figured she was working at the diner and almost phoned there too. The next morning, he consoled himself that she was busy running around, taking care of whatever needed to be done. Friday came and went with more unanswered calls and dead ends. Now Saturday had eased past noon and would soon start barreling towards early evening, and it all felt like lost time.

And here he was again with crushing frustration and now fear. With a heavy sigh, Sandor tossed the broken part to the ground. Hands on his hips, he gnawed his bottom lip and set to pacing. His boots collided against the driveway and he launched a furious scowl at his truck.

Frustration was easy. He’d grappled with it plenty over the past five years, enough to have devised wicked schemes to outsmart himself with distractions. Fear was the devil he didn’t know, and it conspired with that frustration to become a whole new beast that’d surely best him by the end of the weekend.

The seed had already been planted—the sickening thought that something had happened to her—and was primed to run wild now. Every moment, every second he paid attention to it, it sprouted and grew like a vine, wrapping itself around his insides and paralyzing him despite the fervor to break free. 

“You still can’t get ahold of her?” Bronn hesitated over the question, navigating around the flash points that might send Sandor into antsy and enraged oblivion where he’d damn near crawl the walls.

“I call her a couple times a day,” he huffed, and the situation felt like a swift punch to the gut. “Still no answer as of this morning.”

Sandor grabbed the shop rag that hung from the propped-up hood and wiped his hands to spare his white t-shirt, though the thing was already a lost cause and had now earned its place as a dedicated work shirt.

“Well, of course you’ve got no way of getting ahold of her. Maybe you shouldn’t have told her to stay with her friend,” Bronn chuckled as the voice of reason. “Look on the bright side, she’s a good girl. This just means she listened to you.”

He gave a wink and pushed back the sweat-dampened strands of his ash brown hair plastered to his forehead. He had the right of it. Sandor was full of good ideas that had an unusual way of biting him in the ass.

“Oh, believe me,” he rasped on a deep breath, feeling marginally better with Bronn illuminating the most likely and logical reason for Sansa’s absence. “I’ll put that instinct to good use soon enough.” 

Bronn eased forward in the lawn chair and cracked open the cooler to fetch another beer. He pulled free two bottles and tossed one to Sandor.

“I’m surprised you haven’t fucked one of those girls who flock to the bar,” Bronn japed, but Sandor knew him well enough to know this wasn’t quite a joke, even if the delivery suggested it were. “They’re all the same—wanting their cowboy for a night. I’m sure you’d clean up just fine, and it’d tide you over.”

Sandor popped the cap off of his beer, took a long pull, and went back to work, but not before firmly shaking his head.

“Not interested in fucking a bar rat.”

Sandor left no recourse for discussion, much less argument, and he shot Bronn a look with fire behind it. The man settled back in his seat with a slow nod of appreciation. While Bronn probably couldn’t relate, he looked no less impressed by Sandor’s emphatic outburst of loyalty and dedication to a woman he couldn’t even get ahold of.

“You know I’m not sentimental,” Sandor explained and retrieved the new part next to his toolbox. “But the universe ain’t tossing women like Sansa around left and right, and certainly not in my direction. She’s different. I haven’t fucked in five years. Waiting until I can get ahold of her won’t kill me.”

Bronn propped his elbows on his knees. “You still can’t think of her friend’s name?”

Sandor shook his head. “It’s not Janet. I know that for sure. She corrected me on it, but I just had to be a smart ass and keep calling the girl that. Now I can’t get that name outta my head.”

“Sounds about right,” Bronn snorted. He cupped his chin and narrowed his eyes in concentration. “Judy? Jessica? Jeanne?”

Each name thundered into Sandor, pelting him with the obvious that rested on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t shake it loose.

“No.” His pulse quickened, and fingers had gone graceless as he put the new part in place. Sandor tried to steady his tattered breaths to instill some calm, but the exercise only left him more on edge.

“Look, you’ll find her,” Bronn reasoned with infuriating nonchalance. “I know shit’s bad—”

Sandor whipped his head out from underneath the hood. “Bad? How many girls are there now? Ten? Twelve? All showing up in pieces from Lubbock to Amarillo, Devil Creek and now here! What the fuck am I supposed to think? I had no idea it was this bad!”

The flood gates opened, and the deluge came with torrential force as he paced the driveway again in pounding steps. Sandor’s voice boomed and carried into the street. His neighbor on the corner quickly ushered her children inside. Sandor didn’t give a shit who heard or saw him unravel at the seams. He’d gladly accept his new role as the crazy convict that’d come home and was now raging in his driveway for all to hear.

He dipped to the ground and snatched up his beer, downing half of it in some deluded effort to wash down the irony. A serial killer was brutalizing young women, and yet Sandor had been welcomed back into the fold of society with side-eyed judgement and the cold austerity that comes with being shunned.

He didn’t give a shit for himself and didn’t like most folk anyway, but the bitterness of it all foretold a hard path ahead. All he wanted was to return to a quiet life and be left alone. And now he couldn’t even do that because he’d wrapped some part of himself around the dream of a woman like Sansa and extracting himself from it felt more like an exercise in futility.

Sandor tossed his beer bottle to the yard where it landed with a soft thud. The remaining liquid poured from the bottle and pooled in the grass.

“Of course, the second I get out, right, the _second_ I’m out, she falls off the face of the goddamn earth! And all I can think is that something is wrong, and, with my luck, I was two days too late.”

The sun ducked behind a smattering of clouds and cast a gray haze over him. And while he might relish this reprieve, Sandor’s skin burned hot and his blood pumped hard through his veins. The indelible urge to hit something raced through him. His fingers curled to his palms as he paced like a restless animal. He ripped off his hat and tossed it towards the garage where it sailed to the floor.

“Alright, alright. C’mon now,” Bronn consoled and sprung from the flimsy lawn chair that wobbled from his sudden movement. “That’s not gonna help. Let’s think this through.”

A brave man, he corralled Sandor by the shoulders and looked him square in the eyes. “It’s Saturday. She sings on Saturday nights. What bar does she sing at?”

“The fuck if I know!” Sandor snapped and wrenched himself away from Bronn and back to the truck, yet another source of his vexation. He could add it to the insurmountable pile now threatening to overtake him.

Hands trembling, Sandor fit the bolts back in place and torqued them harder than he intended and enough to risk stripping the threads. Bronn hovered next to the truck and blotted out the sun that triumphed once more.

“Devil Creek is tiny. It wouldn’t be hard to track down the bar she sings at. Shit, you could probably roll into town and find it on your own! That place is even smaller than Cactus.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I can get this shit fixed.” Sandor tipped his head to the engine and stared at Bronn from beneath his brow. “Speaking of, make yourself useful and give it a go.”

He tossed his keys to Bronn, who climbed into the driver's seat of the truck. Sandor settled back on his heels and stared into the belly of the vehicle and all its mechanical innards. Bronn tried the engine that cranked and strained and ultimately failed to turn over.

“Piece of shit,” Sandor hissed through clenched teeth. He tore towards the garage, ignored Bronn who hollered about trying again, and ripped his rubber mallet from the toolbox.

His boots slammed against the concrete, and his vision blurred crimson at the edges. Sandor wielded the mallet and struck a heavy blow against the newly replaced part. With another go, Bronn tried the engine that turned over and roared to a start. Incipient fury seeped from Sandor’s skin and rolled off altogether with a deep, resounding sigh.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, closed his eyes, and soaked in the sweet sound of the engine.

When he opened his eyes again, Bronn had hopped out of the front seat and stood next to Sandor. The man swiveled his wrist to check the time.

“It’s just shy of three now. If you clean yourself up and get the fuck outta here within the hour, you’ll make it to Devil Creek just as the sun goes down. I’ll take care of cleaning up out here.”

Sandor nodded, and all the urgency he’d forestalled the past few days sent him inside and straight to the shower. The warm water washed away the frustration right along with the sweat and grease, and he emerged with a new sense of purpose he hadn’t felt in years. All that time spent drifting and feeling useless abruptly departed.

With a towel wrapped around his waist, Sandor stood in front of his bedroom closet and unearthed more clothes he’d forgotten about. In the past, he rarely thought too much about what he wore because it never quite changed and erred on the side of utility more than anything else.

As he thumbed through the hangers, Sandor rediscovered his red and black buffalo plaid shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps; about as close to a dress shirt as he owned. The fabric fit snug across his shoulders and biceps on account of the muscle mass he’d put on. He rolled the sleeves to his elbows and left the top few buttons unsnapped. A fresh pair of Levis fit well over his black boots with a matching belt and his silver buckle.

In the bathroom, Sandor combed out and towel dried his hair that hung loose in waves about his shoulders. He decided that he looked a hell of a lot better now than in an orange jumpsuit, and that at least counted for something. Down the hall, he grabbed his black Stetson along the way.

“Well, shit,” Bronn hollered and hopped from the tweed couch. The TV hummed in the background with some show Sandor didn’t recognize, another relic of the world blazing by. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. You even smell nice too.”

Bronn clapped Sandor on the back and retreated to the kitchen where he fetched another beer from the fridge and was probably half-way to being tipsy if his unsteady movements were any measure.

“Fuck you. I ain’t interested,” Sandor barked through gruff laughter and shoved his wallet in his back pocket.

Beer in hand, Bronn leaned against the doorway that separated the living room from the kitchen.

“Listen,” he said and the lines on his face deepened. “I know you spent the better part of a decade bunking down with others between the war and being locked up. I don’t assume you really want a roommate. I’m gonna stay with Griff for a while and find a place of my own. All that to say, I’ll be outta your hair soon.”

Sandor placed his hat on his head and gave a firm nod. He wasn’t so polite that he’d correct Bronn with some bullshit about his presence being no imposition. For Bronn’s part, this wasn’t just some ploy to extend the invitation. And that was perhaps the thread that held their friendship together all these years, many of which Sandor hadn’t even been around. There was no bullshit between them, and Sandor liked that just fine.

“Alright, I’m off,” Sandor said and plucked his keys from the end table near the front door. “If all goes well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Bronn patted Sandor on the back with a cheeky grin and retreated to the couch where he collapsed to the cushion with a resounding sigh and lifted his beer in salute.

“Good luck. I hope you find her.” 

Something in the parting words stuck with Sandor well after he fired up the truck and whispered his gratitude that the engine hadn’t given out again. Long after he cut through Cactus and navigated the lonesome country roads to the highway, the sentiment still rung dissonant at his core. It echoed through the vacant spaces of his mind in a ghastly tune that he couldn’t drown out even with the radio blaring.

_I hope you find her._

The paranoid part of him thought it sounded an awful lot like condolences; perhaps the same muttered assurances offered to the loved ones of all those missing girls. With each passing mile and song played over the radio, the insistence only grew. His hand tapped the wheel in a nervous rhythm, off beat with the music, and his foot fell heavier against the gas pedal.

The rural highway between Cactus and Devil Creek was one long stretch of farmland and fields. A zephyr rustled through tall grass in a gentle caress. That movement and the highway lines mesmerized, but the pit in Sandor’s stomach grew.

Long drives were among the few things that could soothe him. He’d let his mind wander as wide and wild as the open landscape dotted with trees and rolling hills. The destination never quite mattered. It was the forward movement, the sense of being somewhere other than where his problems resided. And while he wasn’t so dense as to think he could leave those worries behind, the drive was an exhibition in escape.

Only tonight, there was no escape. His worries raced alongside, keeping up and closing in, and chief among them was the prospect of not finding her. Sandor wasn’t one to dwell on things that hadn’t even happened yet, but the idea of leaving Devil Creek empty-handed left him nauseous and preemptively reeling.

The only distraction he had was the brilliant way twilight fell in radiant reds and golds as the sun bled out in a kaleidoscope of colors like he’d never seen. It occurred to him only now that he hadn’t witnessed a sunset in far too long. With wonderment on his side, he tossed his troubles to the wind and decided he’d collect them again only if the need arose. Otherwise, there was no sense in bothering.

Just as Bronn said, Sandor crossed the border into Devil Creek as the sun died on the western horizon. Like all small towns, the state road became Main Street running right through and punctuated with a handful of stop signs and one stoplight.

Grain silos next to the railroad tracks stood as silent sentries looming in the night. Sandor slowed to a near crawl as he reached the main drag. His eyes scanned the storefronts all closed up for the night. Further ahead, a neon sign flashed like a beacon leading the way and Sandor pulled into a parking lot surprisingly crowded for the ghost town he’d just rolled through.

Along the back of the brick building, he grabbed the last parking spot available in the large lot and it was hardly a space at all, just an empty patch of grass that he eased into as one in a long line of pickup trucks.

Sandor killed the engine and exhaled a laugh. Every small town was the same; all with their run-down bar boasting two-step and live music. Some bars even invested in mechanical bulls with the naïve hope of becoming a tourist trap that’d catapult the town from obscurity. He didn’t rightly care about all that. The only thing that mattered to him—singular in his mind and now carrying the full load of his hopes—was that this shitty, small-town bar had a gorgeous redhead who sang sweet on Saturday nights.

He registered only now the way his heart raced, and his palms were slick with sweat. He hadn’t bothered to think through what he might say to her, how he’d explain his sudden presence, or soften the blow of an unwelcome surprise. It was too late now, so Sandor climbed from his truck and adjusted his hat.

He walked bowlegged, working out the soreness of his legs from sitting too long, and scanned the lot as he traversed it. Hand in hand, a couple eyed him with staid aloofness as Sandor followed a few steps behind towards the entrance. He realized now that he was the stranger in town, the outsider who no one recognized. Months ago, they might’ve shaken his hand and asked for his name, but even Sandor could feel the foreboding thick in the air of a town on edge.

He slowed his steps and let the couple go ahead but approached the door and drew a deep breath. He was nervous in a way he hadn’t been since shipping off to Vietnam, except this was a much different war and the consequences of losing seemed greater.

In moments like this, most folk lifted their eyes to the sky and whispered a prayer. Those same idiots claimed that, because the sky was bigger in Texas, God’s blessings were bigger too. Sandor wasn’t an idiot and knew well enough that the sky was just the sky and there wasn’t anyone up there looking after the dumbasses on earth, least of all him.

But just in case anything was listening, Sandor lifted his eyes to the inky darkness and dusting of stars, but it wasn’t a prayer that left his lips as he narrowed his eyes at that great big Texas sky.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Sandor rumbled to whatever was up above and yanked open the door to The Iron Kraken, the only bar in Devil Creek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay...so...please don’t be too disappointed with this chapter! I know what we’re all waiting for and it’s coming (pun 100% intended). Originally, this chapter was part of next chapter, which is twice as long, so it would’ve been a monster update (great for reading but unwieldy for editing!) I needed this chapter to exist somewhere and it made the most sense to have it as a standalone. 
> 
> BUT…I am pleased to announce that this story is FINISHED on my end. I started posting when I had about 75% written, but I completed the story this morning and it’s sitting at a little over 165k words! 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Thank you again for all the support for this story! The next three chapters are some of my favorites! Much love to everyone and see you next week for a Sansa chapter (and it’s a massive one…)! 
> 
> (Also, happy birthday to BlueSands!!!)


	10. Wild Horses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is NSFW!

Theon threatened to cancel Saturday night’s gig.

_“You girls stay home,”_ he’d said to Sansa and Jeyne and reasoned it was safer that way because only the drunk and depraved would be out on a Saturday night.

The precaution was just until things calmed down, of course, but that had been the excuse used all over town—suspended existence until things settled and the maniac was apprehended. That logic suggested things were apt to get better, but they had only gotten worse. More suspicion, more fear, more bodies fetched from rivers and creeks and overgrown tracks of railroad no longer in service.

Sansa had refused.

Her reasoning—folks needed comfort of the familiarity now more than ever. She wasn’t so arrogant as to think her Saturday night gig would save this town from itself. Her singing was a service of sorts and an example that life moves on and there was something to be said for banding together until the storm blew past.

Her instincts had been right. Up on stage, Sansa found new life in her songs, even the worn-out ones she’d been singing every weekend. The entire town had packed into The Iron Kraken tonight. Theon had cleared away the lounge tables and, small though it was, the patrons paired off on the make-shift dance floor and moved in a synchronous two-step rhythm. Wall to wall, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house and the fire marshal might’ve kicked people out for violating code, but the man was too busy drinking and dancing to mind.

Even Harwin was in high spirits that infused the chords he played and rhythm he kept. Sansa responded with extra levity in her voice and the sound sweet to even her own over-critical ears. She swayed on stage with the lights a warm caress against her skin.

Tailored at her waist, her red satin dress delicately draped over her body and the color suited her sun-kissed skin. She’d even taken extra time to curl her hair, an endeavor that normally wasn’t worth the effort but, if this was her only night out of the house, Sansa intended to make a glamorous affair of it.

Well into the second set, the room pulsed with music and laughter, a joyous reprieve from the terror that lurked in the shadows and swept through the town after sunset. _We’ll take back the night,_ Sansa mused with a soft smile as she sang a new song and harmonized with Harwin.

She scanned the crowded room and clusters of people—families, neighbors, friends—who savored the collective merriment suffusing the dance floor, lounge, and the bar where Theon and two other bartenders weaved around one another. They worked double-time to keep up with drink orders and only now looked as though they could catch their breath. 

With each passing song, another handful of couples departed the dance floor and said their goodbyes. The bar slowly cleared out and felt like a sigh after an adrenaline rush, a gentle end to a wild night. As Sansa’s view cleared, something drew her gaze to the far back wall. A tall man in a buffalo plaid shirt stood there with his face obscured beneath the brim of a black cowboy hat.

Inexplicably, Sansa’s heart thrummed a loud beat in her chest, incongruent to the dawdling rhythm of the song she sang. Broad chest and thick arms, the man’s build rather accurately resembled that of Sandor’s whose size and bulk were hard to forget. In fact, Sansa hadn’t been able to get it out of her mind. A welcomed invasion, his presence filtered into all of her daydreams, afternoon desires, and sultry nights where she fantasized about him in ways she never had with any other man.

The last note of the song hung tremulous in the air. The remaining patrons whistled, clapped, and called for an encore, but Sansa breathed a distracted laugh into the microphone and eyed the mystery man who reclined against the wall and didn’t move. From beneath his hat, Sansa discerned his jawline—strong and sharp—and the smirk playing on his lips. She swallowed hard and released a breath.

_It can’t be him._

The thought rooted her heart that would go soaring on a breeze of hopefulness if she wasn’t careful. As it stood, Sansa’s feet had only just hit the ground after seeing Sandor face-to-face. She couldn’t afford to be sent off on cloud nine again, drifting somewhere amongst the stars.

A handful of folks drifted in front of the man. Vision now obscured, Sansa gripped the microphone and remembered her purpose on stage.

“I have one more song.” A tremor ran through her in an unexpected bout of stage fright. She licked her bottom lip and willed the people still talking and laughing and blocking her view to move out of the way. “I suppose it’s a love song and a nice way to end the night. Y’all stay safe out there.”

The lingering crowd clapped and erupted into cheers. Sansa turned to Harwin, who counted off the beat and began with a heartfelt strum on his guitar. Her gaze returned to the back wall and the man still there. He’d shifted with his arms now crossed over his chest and lifted his head enough that Sansa swore she saw half his face marred with scars but couldn’t be sure.

_It’s just a trick of the light._

When she missed a note, Harwin gaped at Sansa until she recovered. Her hands shook and her voice was no better. All these weekends, she’d eyed that exact spot and sang her heart out as if Sandor was watching and listening. And now a man who bore such an uncanny resemblance to him had taken up that mantle. She squeezed her eyes shut.

_It’s my imagination. He’s not really there._

She opened them again. He was there and real enough that Theon navigated around him and patted the man on the shoulder as he passed.

_How could it be him? There’s no way._

Her mind raced and battled to focus on the lyrics, the ones she’d already bungled and stumbled over. And where she normally ended the night on this song because of how much she adored it, Sansa now wished it away, measure by measure. The slow beat was an agonizing crawl to the finish as her pulse picked up and sweat slicked her brow from the stage lights beating hot.

The man rested with one leg bent and his black boot pressed to the wall behind him. His thumbs hooked on his belt loops and drew Sansa’s attention to the silver buckle he wore. Her body responded in the same way it had with Sandor; such a sweet ache it was, both torrid and tortuous and born from passion and wanting him near. She missed a man whose touch she’d never felt, whose lips she’d never kissed, whose arms she’d never fallen asleep in. And here she was now, indulging in fantasies that this man might be him.

_It’s not him. Of course, it’s not._

Sansa ended the song two beats too soon and mumbled a thank you into the microphone before unceremoniously exiting the stage and leaving Harwin dumbfounded and fielding all the accolades. She smiled sweetly enough as she crossed the dance floor and accepted the handshakes and compliments folks gave.

With distracted courtesy, Sansa drifted across the room; her legs moving without consent and platform heels pounding against the floor in a purposeful rhythm. That purpose was to put this all to bed. She’d confirm this was only an impossible coincidence, apologize to the gentleman for the confusion, and carry on with Sandor existing only in her heart, hopes, and dreams.

As she crossed the room, the man didn’t move, but she saw him smile and, when he lifted his head, saw the scars too and his eyes filled with just as much delirious desire as she felt now.

Sansa quickly navigated the tables at the edge of the dance floor and ignored the folk vying for her attention. She brushed them off with a mumbled “excuse me” and continued to close the distance between her and a man who was one hell of a dead ringer for Sandor Clegane.

Her knees quaked. She’d fall. She’d go right to the floor and her trembling hands would be useless to stop her. She tossed her long hair behind her shoulders and the man stood upright, back straight and arms by his side, as Sansa approached in slow, graceless steps. She stood before him, awestruck at the sight before her eyes, and every thought fled.

“Is it really you?” She hardly heard herself speak and knew it was a ridiculous question; absurd and stupid, but the only words that would manifest.

His laughter—rough and deep—sealed it. “I don’t know who else it’d be,” he rumbled with a smile. 

Sandor stepped out of the shadows and stared down at Sansa, just a breath of space between them now. The indelible and confounding urge to break into both laughter and tears coursed through her. She did neither.

Speechless and floundering and now dizzy enough that she was almost certain she’d pass out if she moved, Sansa’s eyes swept over him. Tight jeans clung to his long legs and the silver buckle hung prominently over the bulge in his pants that she gaped at until he laughed again, apparently delighted by her reticent wonderment.

Standing in front of him, Sansa appreciated now just how tall he really was and felt the way his presence commanded the room. The top few buttons of his shirt had been left undone to accommodate how muscled his chest and shoulders were. A small patch of chest hair was visible in the open space. No longer distracted by the details of him, Sansa took him in full sight and was rendered speechless by how painfully handsome he looked in a hat, boots, and those jeans.

“What…how? Are you allowed to be here?” Sansa heard herself ask as she floated somewhere up above, looking down and feeling every bit as flummoxed as she probably appeared.

“That only depends on you,” he answered, shifted nearer, and matched Sansa’s eyes with an imploring gaze. “Are you allowing it?”

Sansa stared up at him. The peppery and masculine scent of his aftershave filled the shrinking space between them as he hovered close. She nodded when she registered that he’d asked her a question and hoped “yes” was the right answer because she hadn’t been listening; too mesmerized by his presence and her hands overcome with the urge to touch him. A rapid and frenetic misfiring of all her instincts rendered her paralyzed with silence.

“You’re a hard woman to track down.” A smirk lifted one corner of his mouth in a rugged smile that would probably do her in if he did it again, and his eyes danced with something she hadn’t seen in Sandor during their visits. Whatever it was, butterflies besieged her belly, their flutter beckoning another wave of timid reserve. She sweetened it with a shy smile.

_Say something!_

“I…I can’t believe you’re here.” She shook her head, still astounded by this turn of events, but the tears finally manifested and welled in her eyes. “You’re really here.”

Solemnity must’ve taken over Sandor and wiped clean his smile. His eyes drifted to her hand, which he reached for. His fingers slipped between hers with unmistakable tenderness, a lover’s touch. A shuddering breath passed Sansa’s lips as his thumb swept over her knuckles and she marveled at their hands entwined before gazing up at him again.

An unspoken understanding passed between them—no longer sullied by barriers of glass and time and impossible circumstances. Transfixed, they both reveled in their first touch with muted awareness of their surroundings. The world was theirs, and that knowledge—pure, unadulterated, and threatening to burn her alive with the sheer heat of it—sent her into his arms.

Sandor stumbled back on his heels at the abruptness as Sansa tossed her arms around his neck and pressed her body against his. When the shock wore off, he wrapped his arms around the small of her back and nuzzled his cheek against hers. She memorized the feel of his stubble softly scratching against her skin, how he smelled, the way he felt, the sound of his ragged breath rustling in her ear as he dipped into their embrace. One hand slipped from her back and he buried his fingers in her hair. When he drew in a deep inhale, Sansa felt his chest expand against her.

“It’s you,” she whispered and clung to him tighter and, if it weren’t for her dress or increasingly wayward adherence to ladylike manners, she would’ve jumped in his arms and wrapped her legs around him.

Sandor exhaled a quiet laugh, and Sansa closed her eyes to soak in the sound of it. He loosened his hold and she let go too, but he took both of her hands and gave a slight squeeze. Sansa realized only now that she was still shaking like a leaf. In his own brand of nervousness, Sandor rubbed the back of his neck and eyed the dance floor. Sansa followed his gaze to find only a few couples still swaying to the music.

“I don’t two-step so I won’t ask for a dance, but I could use a drink and you look like you could use several. And I suppose we’ve got some catching up to do.”

Sansa watched the way the words left his mouth and that, along with his voice, sent her adrift on a great big sea of fondness, but she gained more of her speech now. The price she paid for her words was the impossible heat hitting her cheeks. 

“I’d love that,” she said through a bright smile.

With a coy grin, Sandor took her hand and led the way to the bar and Sansa admired him from behind—the way his toned ass looked in those jeans, the breadth of his arms, his black hair hanging well past the center of his shoulders which were massive.

She inspected him with all the gauzy and girlish affection of a lovesick fool, enough that, when Sansa settled next to Sandor at the bar, her eyes fixed on him and she forgot all her manners. In her periphery, she was only vaguely aware of Theon flashing a mischievous grin and extending his hand to Sandor.

“Theon Greyjoy. Judging by Miss Stark’s current condition, you must be Sandor. Nice to meet you.” 

“Likewise.” Sandor accepted Theon’s handshake and gave their drink order—bourbon neat and a seven and seven. He leaned against the bar and turned to Sansa. The smile he gave was enough for her to rediscover her courtesies and introduce him to Jeyne and Harwin.

Wade wandered over with stars gleaming in his eyes and blathered on about Sandor’s bull riding career. Sansa intervened after reading the cues—Sandor’s terse smile and clenched jaw—and sent a tipsy Wade on his way. Jeyne was polite enough but didn’t talk much and looked just as perplexed as Sansa felt. The alcohol running through Harwin and Theon left them far chattier than usual and likely to go on all night.

With one foot propped on the bar rail and his forearm resting against the bar top, Sandor turned to Sansa once more. She mirrored him and shifted closer so he could hear her over the music.

“We should find a more private place to sit,” she suggested. Her gaze fell to his muscled and tanned forearm as he slid Theon cash to settle up the bill. “I think my friends are a little excitable tonight.”

“They wouldn’t be the only ones,” Sandor replied, and his eyes drifted to her lips. Theon returned with their drinks and the change that Sandor left behind as a tip.

“Thank you,” Sansa said, and her hand trembled slightly as her glass clanked against Sandor’s in salute.

If he noticed, he didn’t let on and instead gave a nod before scanning the lounge. 

Sansa led the way to a quiet area that offered perhaps the best chance for privacy—a half-circle booth nestled in the far corner and with a tall back. A dimmed Tiffany lamp hung above the table and a tea light candle flickered in a red glass holder.

Sansa scooted into the booth with a buffer of space between her and Sandor, respectable enough to ward off the gossip—Sansa Stark canoodling with a stranger—that’d rip through town otherwise. Besotted by Sandor’s presence, though, that mindfulness would surely melt away.

“You’ve got a beautiful voice,” Sandor remarked and tipped his head to the empty stage across the room. His gaze glided down Sansa’s body before returning to her eyes. “Beautiful everything.”

“Thank you,” she laughed on a wavering breath and sipped her drink. “You haven’t seen all of me, though.”

She hadn’t meant to be cheeky, but Sandor regarded her as if she had. His lips tugged into a grin and longing surfaced in his eyes a darker gray in the murky light.

“I intend to.” He spoke in a deep voice against the glass that hovered near his lips and peered at her over the rim.

Entirely unbidden, a thin sigh escaped Sansa and she could do even less to help the way she stared at his hands cradling his glass on the table. It looked small in his grasp and she imagined what it might be like to have those strong fingers gripping her thighs or hips.

“I have no doubts,” Sansa commented mindlessly. “How long were you here?”

Sandor shrugged and swirled his glass against the table. “Half hour, maybe longer.”

A flutter rippled through Sansa at the thought of him having watched her for so long. Some part of her had known. His gaze was always heavy against her skin, a signature of sorts, and no man had ever managed its equal.

“You could’ve come over.” Sansa nudged him gently with her elbow, and even that slight touch left her giddy and seemed to fire start something in him too. Sandor’s attention, with all its characteristic and wholly consuming weight behind it, landed on her. He eased back in the seat and, in doing so, inched closer.

“I liked watching you, hearing you sing,” he murmured.

“I saw you,” Sansa replied, just as softly, and did her part to close the distance between them as she scooted closer. Beneath the table, her knee brushed against his. “I didn’t know it was you, but I hoped it was.”

Closer now than they’d ever been, Sansa studied his face and Sandor let her in what she suspected was another show of trust. She noticed a faint scar above his lip, the stubble on the unmarred part of his chin, the subtle crease between his brows. And where he might’ve been concerned that she’d find him less handsome up close, nothing diminished except her inhibitions. She’d cede a victory to what she craved and didn’t care what the consequences were.

“I told you,” he smirked, and his gaze circuited her face—between her eyes, along her lips, across her cheeks. “Believing is seeing. You must be a real devout believer.” His eyes deliberately dropped between her legs with unmistakable and unabashed brazenness before lifting again with a wink. He looked away and sipped his drink.

“I tried calling you the day I got out,” Sandor continued, more serious now. “And every day since,” was the afterthought, quieter and something of a secret he may have thought twice about sharing.

“Oh no!” Sansa’s hand flew to her mouth, and the other rested on Sandor’s forearm on the table. “I’ve been staying with Jeyne. I wrote you a letter with her address so you could reach me.”

An embarrassed heat surfaced across her cheeks and poured down her chest. There was no way she could’ve known, and the bad timing had little to do with her, but Sansa shouldered some blame anyhow.

Sandor cradled his glass between both palms and studied the amber contents for a great long while. He toiled over something unspoken and, just when Sansa had given up hope that he’d share, he stared at her.

“I was worried about you. I’m not one to make a mountain out of a molehill, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what’s been going on. I didn’t know it’s as bad as it is. I’m just happy you’re safe.”

Sansa gave a smile meant to soothe, but her heart picked up its rhythm and sent her easing even closer to him.

“And I’m happy you’re here,” she said and felt her brows knit together. “I still can’t believe it. It’s like a dream.”

For a moment, they stared at one another with mutual fascination, similar to how they’d regarded each other from across the glass. As if he remembered the barriers between them were no longer physical, Sandor reached towards her and tenderly brushed the hair from Sansa’s bare shoulder. His fingertips traced the dusting of faint freckles there in a simple touch sodden with intimacy.

Sansa’s head swam in a muddled mess that did her limbs no favors either as a numbing buzz vibrated through her.

“How long have you been out?” Sansa asked and occupied her hands with her drink, lest they get her into all sorts of trouble with him. “It seems so sudden. I thought you said you had years to go.”

Sandor’s head fell against the padded back of the booth and a chuckle poured from his mouth. He appeared no less mystified by the sudden turn of events as she was.

“I got out Wednesday. I didn’t expect I’d get parole. It’s crazy to think a week ago I hadn’t even seen you yet.”

Sansa regarded Sandor as if he were a mirage ripped from one of her dreams and dropped into reality. When his eyes fixed on her again, he too seemed afflicted with that same sentiment; as if this were all apt to disappear.

“Is it strange for you?” Sansa asked.

He nodded, and his quiet bewilderment turned melancholic, though he spoke through a soft smile.

“Like you, I’m afraid it’s just a dream and I’ll wake up back where I was. My Pop called those white nightmares—where the dream is far sweeter than reality, which is the true horror.”

Sansa slipped her hand in his. One thing she hadn’t accounted for was the real-time swapping of anecdotes, no delays or worry that the other might misinterpret. She ran her thumb across the top of his hand and Sandor closed his eyes and drew a deep breath as if to luxuriate in the sensations. When his eyes opened again, he contemplated their hands joined together.

“It’s real,” Sansa whispered and edged a little nearer, the space between them now halved and the closing distance not lost on Sandor who observed that space with a devilish glint in his eyes. He gazed at her mouth again and licked his bottom lip in a prelude that quickened Sansa’s breaths. When she thought he might kiss her, Sandor broke with a devious smirk.

“You can prove it to me later and we’ll ride out this dream as long as we can, just in case.” He paused momentarily and sipped his drink before glancing at her. “It’s a good thing you live here. I can’t leave Texas for a year. That’s part of my parole terms.”

“Who’d ever wanna leave Texas?” Sansa laughed.

Sandor chuckled too and lifted one brow at Sansa. “That’s exactly what I said. Although, you’re one to talk. By the sound of it, you ran off the first chance you got.”

“I did,” Sansa conceded and sat up straight with a measured inhale. “And I still regret it. I never should’ve left.”

She had revealed enough of this story in her letters that she hoped Sandor understood this bit still wounded her in a way. She quieted and couldn’t quite look him in the eye but gazed down into her seven and seven and watched the bubbles disappearing one by one.

“Don’t go giving regret any more rope. It’s bound to tie you up.” Sandor offered his wisdom just as Sansa had always imagined it from his letters—a deep voice with a slight twang, simple and firm. “You have a lot to be proud of. Cling to that instead.”

Sansa turned to him with one leg partially pulled up on the booth and, though it wasn’t quite ladylike, she didn’t care and neither did he by the looks of it.

“You talk about nightmares,” Sansa began with hesitation over words she’d thought but had never spoken, the shape of them foreign on her tongue. “My time in Kansas City was just one long nightmare. I don’t know that it was worth it, though I guess I’m stronger for it.”

Sandor’s eyes roved over her, but his appraisal had changed, and a faint smile creased his lips that Sansa noticed were nicely shaped and looked soft.

“You were a strong woman before all of that, little bird. You’re the right kind of strong.”

Sansa tilted her head and ran one fingertip around the rim of her glass, a movement that momentarily drew Sandor’s attention. “What does that mean?”

He shifted close enough now that the space between them no longer existed. “Quiet strength,” he said. “People conflate being cruel and cold with being strong. It takes no courage to be a mean bastard like me. Some of the strongest people I know have the biggest hearts. That’s usually the way it goes.”

_“You have a gentle heart,”_ Sansa’s mother used to say, and she never quite knew if it was a compliment or consolation for lacking Arya’s adventurous spirit. The comparison always stung for both her and her sister. The way Sandor looked at Sansa now left no room for misinterpretation.

She licked her bottom lip and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You’re sweet.”

“I’m not,” he countered and, with his bicep pressed against her shoulder, leaned into her. “It’s just the truth.”

“Well, thank you for saying so.” Sansa nursed another sip of her drink and glanced at him. “Now that you’re free, what are you gonna do?”

Sandor thought it over with a deep sigh, but ultimately shook his head and turned his gaze to the ceiling.

“The million-dollar question,” he remarked and paused for a moment before looking to her. “You know what’s crazy? I had five years to think about it and never really did. I guess it seemed too far off. My place is in Cactus and my buddy Bronn owns a bar, sort of like this one. I’ll probably go to work there and figure out the rest.”

He made it sound so simple and with a nonplussed air that blotted out any obvious concern for his future, but Sandor stared into the remnants of his glass almost empty as if he might find the answers there.

“What would you do?” he asked and searched Sansa’s eyes. 

She mulled it over for a moment and retraced her own path to freedom and the things she had sought to reclaim of herself.

“Anything I wanted,” she responded with a tender smile, in raptures on his behalf that his life was now his own again. “Sing a little, love a little.”

He stared at her lips with brow slightly furrowed, battling some invisible foe that she hoped he’d lose to because it probably meant he’d kiss her. She hoped he might.

“Just a little?” Sandor sipped his drink but exhaled a laugh into the glass.

“No, you got me.” Sansa stared at her hands folded on the table. “I’d love a lot.”

“I know,” he whispered with enough affection that it drew Sansa’s gaze back to him. His head tilted slightly to the side. “That’s just the kind of woman you are. For tonight, you can do both.”

Sansa bit her lip just as a timid smile bloomed across. “But I already sang.”

Her stomach flipped with more butterflies, and heart pounded a driving beat. Sandor reached across her shoulders and drew her to his side. He smelled like bourbon and leather, entirely masculine, and Sansa’s chest rose and fell in frantic movements.

“You’ll sing in a different way,” he muttered and leaned so close she could feel the warmth coming off him.

She had dreamed of this moment; the luscious and heady romance of their first kiss, the sensations ravaging her body as they were now—heart beating and spirit soaring with dizzying delight—and she could almost taste it.

The tip of his nose faintly brushed against hers. “Do you care what people might think?” Each of his whispered words was a caress against her lips.

She couldn’t speak, the words all fled, so Sansa merely shook her head as his palm slowly settled at the dip of her waist.

“Are you sure?” His lips grazed hers with the slightest of pressure, teasing with what was to come.

“Yes.” The question didn’t matter and the answer even less. She could feel the pulse between her legs, the ache for some kind of release.

Sandor’s lips—just as supple as she imagined—pressed against hers in a tentative kiss that Sansa thought was chaste and sweet, especially with how his fingers sunk amongst her hair and cradled the back of her head. His tongue ran against her bottom lip and slipped into her mouth, and the fervor set in then. Sansa sunk into the kiss that was as deliberate as it was delicious. The taste of him, his warmth, the urgency and fire behind their first kiss, it was likely to send all her senses flying into the sun and burning up.

His mouth worked in concert with his palm that slipped from her waist to stroke the outside of her thigh and disappear beneath her dress. Sansa might’ve protested in some other life where she cared that people were surely watching, but her legs fell apart against his touch. As if he worked some sort of charm on her, she responded to him just as he wanted her to. His hand traveled further up her thigh until reaching the juncture between her legs.

His thumb swept against the outside of her cotton panties where wetness soaked through and, inebriated on her desire, Sansa gasped softly and bucked her hips enough to meet his touch, a movement that rewarded her with a throaty groan from Sandor. He slowed the kiss and faintly panted against her mouth.

“Fuck,” he sighed with his forehead resting against hers. “We gotta stop or I’m liable to take you right here and put on a show like this town’s never seen.”

Sansa protested with a disappointed hum and her palms smoothed up his chest, a solid mass of muscle strong beneath her touch. Her fingertips traced a fastened mother-of-pearl button and her mind toyed with the untamed and entirely uncouth thought of ripping open his shirt with one solid tug.

Sandor settled back slightly and flashed a suggestive smile. “I think this is the part where you ask to take me home.”

His eyes roamed her body again like a man starved, ravenous in the way he’d consume her, and she could only imagine what thoughts tore across his mind to manifest the way he looked at her now.

“I’ve never done that before. I hope you know that,” Sansa admitted with a bundle of nerves in her belly and her voice shook. She wasn’t the kind of girl to take a man home like this, but he wasn’t just any man.

Sandor nodded and responded with an adoring grin. The whiplash of competing sentiments—burning desire and tender admiration—sent Sansa’s heart soaring, mind swimming, and body responding.

“I do know that. You’re a good girl.” He leaned close again, head tilted to account for the brim of his hat as his mouth hovered just a breath away from hers. “You gonna be a good girl for me tonight?”

Sansa nodded and released a soft sigh as his lips grazed her neck. Her head fell back in response as he trailed kisses towards the spot right beneath her ear. He gathered up her hair in his fist and gave a gentle yank.

“You know what I mean when I say that?” His words were a low rumble in her ear but effectively pulsated through her.

“Yes,” Sansa gasped, and her eyes fluttered shut, entranced by the control he exerted over her with so much ease.

When he pulled away, Sansa opened her eyes and Sandor leisurely traced the pad of his thumb along her bottom lip.

“Good,” he said with a faint grin. 

“But you’re the man, so you’re supposed to do the asking,” Sansa murmured and steadied her voice, though she veritably floated to the ceiling in disoriented bliss.

“I am that,” Sandor replied distractedly and seemed to have not heard her for how singularly focused on her mouth he still was. “Will you let me take you home?”

She nodded and whispered, “Yes, I will.”

“Good, let’s go,” he mumbled and discreetly reached down the front of his jeans to adjust himself, though there was no hiding a manhood like his in pants like that. Sandor glanced at Sansa, downed his drink, and donned a wicked smile. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your look,” he teased and extracted himself from his seat. 

Sansa gathered enough of her composure to slide from the booth. Sandor eyed her from beneath the brim of his hat and held out his hand. She contemplated his calloused palm and long fingers and slipped her hand into his.

The town would surely talk and Sansa didn’t have it in her to care; not as curious eyes followed them across the room, not as she gathered up her purse from behind the bar and bid Theon, Harwin, and Jeyne goodnight, not even as she told Jeyne she wouldn’t be staying with her tonight but was going back home instead. Sandor hadn’t flinched at the folk gawking at them and made no bones about taking Sansa home, so neither did she.

Hand in hand, he led the way outside and across a mostly empty parking lot to a black truck with polished chrome details that caught the streetlamp’s dull light. Sansa chased down her frenzied thoughts for something to say and hoped he didn’t notice the way her hand trembled.

“Did you drive here?” Sandor asked almost as an afterthought as they approached his truck.

“No, I rode with Jeyne.” Her response sounded meek and frazzled even to her own ears.

He glanced at her and cleared his throat, and it occurred to Sansa only then that he might be nervous too. She’d never know it for the way he carried himself—assured, confident, and lacking all the put-on airs of a rhinestone cowboy. Sandor Clegane was the real deal, and Sansa was both terrified and enraptured.

He opened the driver side door and helped Sansa climb in. She slid across the bench seat to the passenger side and watched as Sandor settled behind the wheel. The truck’s rumbling engine provided enough white noise to break up the silence between them. She directed the handful of turns back to her house and wove some sweetness into her voice so he wouldn’t mistake her nervousness as second-guessing.

Sandor kept his eyes on the road and drove slowly through her neighborhood and Sansa took the opportunity to study him. He must’ve felt her gaze. His back straightened, and he swallowed hard with his sharp jaw tensing.

“This one right here.” Sansa pointed to her house and Sandor responded with a silent nod and pulled into the driveway next to her Cutlass. 

He killed the engine, exposing the anxiousness that existed in the quiet between them, and turned to Sansa with his arm draped over the back of the seat. Beneath the burden of his intense gaze, she stared at her hands folded in her lap, feeling like a fool. She’d been brave behind the glass that’d separated them on their visits and talked a big game that she’d have to make good on now.

“Aren’t you scared of me?” Sandor asked on a gruff voice, but she heard the doubts clear enough. “A convict, a man you just met.”

It never occurred to Sansa to fear him like that, not even now as she was moments away from inviting him into her home and into her bed, and she knew herself well enough to know that that would double as an invitation into her heart too.

She searched his face cast in shadows. “Should I be?”

“No,” he replied firmly and matched her eyes. “I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you. You know that, right? I hate fire, but I’d burn this whole world up if anyone ever tried.”

With his arm resting behind her, Sandor’s fingers wound through her hair and he licked his bottom lip. His hand cupped her shoulder and urged her path along the seat. Nestled against his side and with his arm wrapped around her back, Sansa stared at him. Sandor’s palm cradled the side of her face and his thumb traced her cheekbone.

“I believe you,” Sansa murmured.

When she dropped her eyes, he leaned closer and pressed his lips to hers in a surprisingly gentle kiss for such a hard man. Her lips parted and Sandor’s tongue slipped into her mouth with slow and sensuous ministration. The nerves dissolved away, and Sansa sunk into him.

With his forehead resting against hers, the tension in his body seemed to dissipate.

“Wait here,” he said and, with a quick kiss, slid from the truck and circled around to the passenger side where he opened the door.

Sansa accepted his hand with a winsome smile as she slipped from the truck.

“What?” he asked on a small, exhaled laugh and looked to her as though he couldn’t reconcile the fondness he surely saw in her.

“You’re a gentleman.” Sansa gripped his hand along the way to the front door and, with the other, fished out the keys from her purse.

“There’s nothing gentle about me, not unless you want it gentle,” he quipped. “But a real man knows how to treat a woman right.”

They reached the door which Sansa fumbled to unlock as her fingers suddenly lost all dexterity or will to cooperate. It didn’t help that she knew Sandor watched her in the pale light. When she managed the task, Sansa pushed through the door with Sandor following behind.

He hovered in the living room as Sansa turned on the table lamps that put off a hazy glow. She wasn’t trying for romance exactly, but it must’ve seemed that way as she put on the record player, asked Sandor to make himself at home, and offered him a drink.

He removed his hat and smoothed back his hair but didn’t sit, and Sansa didn’t bother with the lights in the kitchen. Her trembling hands groped around the cabinets for two highball glasses and, in a bout of bumbling tension, she forgot where she kept the whiskey. She stilled when his shadow blotted out the dull light spilling in from the living room.

With her back to him, she heard Sandor move across the room, his boots hitting the floor in slow thuds. Her pulse raced and she clung to her poise, but it slipped through her ungainly fingers that pulled the whiskey from the cabinet and almost knocked the bottle over as she set it to the counter.

As his presence neared, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Sansa closed her eyes when she felt the warmth and pressure of Sandor’s chest at her back. Wedged between the counter and him, she gripped his forearms now snaked around her middle. One of his hand’s slid up her stomach to cup her breast and the other grasped her waist. She felt small in his arms and loosed a broken sigh when his lips delivered kisses up her neck.

“You’re shaking,” he muttered in her ear, his breath divine against her skin. “I thought you said you aren’t scared.”

“I’m not. I’m just nervous.” Sansa clumsily poured two glasses of whiskey that splashed against the counter in a fine mess. _Just give it up._

She slammed the bottle down harder than she intended and turned in his arms. Too ashamed to look at him, she fixed her eyes to his chest and the buttons undone on his shirt. The dark chest hair and thick swathes of muscle didn’t help her cause.

“It’s been a long time for me and I know it has for you too and I don’t want to disappoint you because I feel like we’ve been building up to this and I just didn’t expect you to be here tonight and I—”

Sandor’s lips crushed against hers in a fevered kiss that halted the rambling torrent of words spilling from her mouth. He bucked his hips against hers in a languid roll, his manhood rock hard against her.

With his large hands gripping the edge of the counter on either side of her, Sandor eased forward to meet her eye line.

“I don’t think you could disappoint me if you tried,” he muttered against her mouth between soft kisses and reached behind her for a highball glass. “This will help.”

Sansa nodded, perhaps a bit too eager and just as eagerly sipped the whiskey that burned the back of her throat. She coughed but swallowed it down, and Sandor breathed a rasping laugh as he took the glass from her. He downed the rest of the contents and returned the glass to the counter.

With effortless ease, he scooped up Sansa who wrapped her legs tight around his hips. Much like the drive home, she pointed the way to the bedroom, but relished the taste of whiskey on his lips the whole way down the hall and intensified the kiss with each step he took.

Sandor nudged open the bedroom door with the tip of his boot in what was probably meant to be gentle. When the door collided against the adjacent wall, Sansa laughed against Sandor’s mouth as he dropped her to the bed before turning on the lamp.

Sansa settled back on her elbows that sunk into the mattress and drank in the sight of Sandor as he shucked out of his shirt and kicked off his boots. His stomach was a rippled expanse of taut muscle, tanned and well-defined in the gauzy light. She’d never seen a man like him—the sheer magnetism of his strength and masculinity, the power and intensity behind his eyes now squarely on her.

“Your turn,” he commanded and, with one hand extended to her, pulled Sansa from the bed. She slipped from her platforms and released a fragile breath as Sandor settled behind her once more. With her back pinned against his bare chest, Sandor turned towards the dresser mirror opposite the bed.

He met her gaze in the reflection as the two of them discovered in unison the pair they made—his ruggedness and strong profile in splendid contrast to Sansa’s delicate features and femininity she wholly embraced. Without breaking his stare, Sandor swept the hair from Sansa’s neck, and she tilted her head to expose its length. He dipped to kiss the top of her collarbone.

“Tell me this is what you want and it’s not just something you’re giving me.”

His grumbling voice vibrated through her and Sansa’s head fell back against his chest. Her lips parted in aching expectation and her heaving chest drew his eyes.

“I want this too.”

The declaration came almost like a moan, breathy and yearning. If he couldn’t take her word for it, he’d see it clear enough in the red of her cheeks and the desire running ravage behind her eyes.

Sandor’s fingers slipped beneath the thin straps of Sansa’s dress and he slid them from her shoulders and down her arms. With one tug, the dress passed her hips and pooled on the floor. Her bare breasts rose and fell in time with her tattered breaths, and Sansa lifted her arms to clasp her hands gently behind Sandor’s neck.

He stilled behind her, all but his hands that ran up the bare expanse of her stomach and palmed her breasts. Even in the reflection, Sansa saw the hunger in his eyes. He’d feast on her tonight, and the thought alone sent an enthralled chill up her spine. She shuddered beneath his touch as he rolled each of her nipples between his thumb and forefinger.

“My God, you’re a gorgeous woman.” His chin rested on her shoulder and he stared at her in the mirror. A pink blush seeped across her chest and she bit her bottom lip as a small moan hummed at the back of her throat. One of Sandor’s hands slipped between her legs and, with his forefinger, he traced her slit from the outside of her underwear in a light touch.

“I know how to make you feel good,” he whispered in her ear and flicked her earlobe with his tongue. “And you know it, don’t you?”

Sansa swallowed hard and nodded.

“You just need to relax,” he said and kissed her cheek.

Something softened in his eyes and Sandor took Sansa’s hand and led her to the bed where he encouraged her to lie down. She eased back on the pillow with stilted rigidity and watched Sandor shed the rest of his clothes.

As he stood at the edge of the bed, an inadvertent peep escaped Sansa at the sight of his erect manhood, far bigger than the only other man she’d been with. She couldn’t help how she gaped at him with splendid glee and didn’t care if he saw how her eyes widened or lips curled in a smile.

A dark chuckle rumbled from Sandor as he took himself in hand. His thumb swirled over the tip and spread the liquid pearling there. He gave two strokes of his shaft before crawling onto the bed and climbing on top of Sansa.

Huddled under him and with their legs intertwined, Sansa craned her neck for a tender kiss, but Sandor’s tongue plunged into her mouth. He sent the nerves away and Sansa bloomed beneath him, losing herself in his taste, the warmth, the roiling passion behind every touch and kiss, like a storm gathering electric and powerful on the horizon.

Her fingers sunk into his hair and she pressed her thighs against his hips, well aware of his thick manhood brushing between her legs. She felt her lower lips part, wet and pulsing with the promise of what was to come. Sandor’s hands roamed the silhouette of her curves with unbridled desire she felt in his touch and the way he held her against him as if she might fly away.

When he finally broke the kiss, it was only for his mouth to explore the path from her neck to between her breasts. He took one in hand and brought her nipple to his lips that teased as he spoke.

“Did you touch yourself thinking about me?” Sandor gazed up at her and his tongue flicked her nipple in a delectable prelude to his lips as he sucked with more tenderness than she expected.

Sansa exhaled a quivering breath and nodded. Her knees fell apart by some instinct burning through her now, leaving her skin hot and mind numb. The only faculties she had left were dedicated to the way he was making her feel, and he had only just started.

“Good girl.” Sandor’s voice resonated from his chest in a sweet vibration against her. His fingers curled around Sansa’s underwear at the hips and he slid them to her knees.

Gazing at her with eyes heavy-lidded and lust-laden, he propped himself on his elbow next to her.

“Like this?” His mouth swept against hers as one long finger swiped between her slick lower lips. Sansa nodded again and sighed into his kiss.

“And this?” The pad of his finger grazed her clit with a delicate pass and Sansa’s head fell back against the pillow with some muttered nonsense.

“Yes,” she whispered, spread her legs, and writhed her hips against his touch. “Like that.”

Sandor bundled two fingers and slid them inside of her. Sansa gasped and her eyes fluttered as he guided her hand to wrap around his shaft. “You think about me, hard and inside of you?”

His breath was a hot pant against her lips, interspersed with licks and nips. She felt him tense beneath her touch as her fingers slid up and down his hard cock, and Sansa fully savored the sensations rolling through her body now.

“Show me what else you thought about,” Sandor murmured with his head lolled back and eyes squeezed shut. 

Encouraged by the desire to please him and explore in her own right, Sansa extracted herself from underneath him and, with a gentle nudge, urged him to lay back on the pillow. He obliged and observed as Sansa maneuvered down his body. She pressed her lips to his chest damp with sweat and followed the trail of hair down his abdomen.

On all fours, she balanced on one forearm and wrapped her hand around the base of Sandor’s shaft. In a tantalizing sweep, her pursed lips ran up his length until reaching the head of his cock where she teased with a lady-like lick.

Emboldened, Sansa gazed up at Sandor. He stared back, chest heaving and seemingly overcome with wild anticipation. It pushed him towards the edge where all prelude ended, and he’d fuck her senseless just like he promised.

His eyes drifted to the mirror across the room and Sansa gazed over her shoulder. On all fours, her pink lips peeked out from between her legs still pressed together. Slowly, she straddled his knees, spreading her legs for him to see and revealing her glistening wetness. Sandor responded with a ragged grunt as he ran his palms over his face.

When she turned back around, Sansa took as much of him in her mouth as she could. Her tongue swirled over the head of his thick cock and she listened in rapt to every sound he made—each deep, rumbling groan that left her pulsing between the legs; the way he breathed her name or muttered through indiscernible moans.

“Goddamn, that gorgeous mouth of yours. Fuck,” he panted with a hand at the back of her head and his fingers buried in her hair.

His hips rolled, forcing more of himself into her mouth, and Sansa sucked harder, her lips meeting the top of her hand that curled around his shaft. A sudden movement, Sandor pushed Sansa from him and sat up. She shot up as well, wide-eyed and ready to apologize for having done something wrong, but Sandor reached forward and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand.

“We’ll have to go slow or this will be over too soon.”

If he was embarrassed, Sansa wouldn’t know. His cheeks flushed and chest heaved and Sansa smiled as she settled back on her knees, beaming with both pride and a rush that she could leave a man like Sandor nearly indisposed as he was now; still panting to catch his breath and gazing at her like he never wanted to look away.

“Turn around,” Sandor commanded and leaned forward to yank Sansa by the hips and drag her towards him.

“Hmm?”

Her quizzical response went unanswered as her body followed his subtle demands. She turned around and found herself on hands and knees and straddling him backwards. With one hand, he guided his cock towards her mouth, and, to Sansa’s utter delight and confusion, she felt his tongue between her legs, licking her folds with no moment of hesitation or introduction. His manhood in her mouth dampened Sansa’s moans.

No man had ever done this to her. She’d been curious, but Joffrey had refused. And where he had been disgusted at the thought of putting his mouth between her legs, Sandor feasted to satiate a ravenous appetite with savoring licks, soft kisses, and gentle sucks of her clit.

“This is what I thought about.” Each exhaled breath was a cool burst at the heat between her legs and interspersed as he tongued her. Sansa tried to focus, to pleasure him the best she could, but her movements became altogether graceless.

“All those nights alone…” Sandor slid one finger inside of her. “With your pictures…” As his finger thrust into her, his lips dove between her legs again and the tip of his tongue slowly circled her clit. “I thought of this. How your sweet little pussy tastes. How fucking wet you are, soaked between the legs. Tight. Just for me. How hard I’ll make you come.”

Sansa couldn’t see straight. Her vision blurred, so she closed her eyes, but trembled on her forearms. Focus. She tried to focus on sucking, on making him feel like she did now. Her heart slammed in her chest and the moans pouring from her lips filled the room. Sansa took more of Sandor in her mouth, every sound of pleasure she made vibrating in the back of her throat.

As soon as she found some rhythm, she lost it again as Sandor sat up, grabbed her by the waist, and tossed her to the mattress, paralyzing her yet again with the abruptness. He settled between her legs that wrapped around his hips and kissed her hard. As his mouth crushed against hers, Sansa felt his length slide between her lower lips and the pressure of his tip at her opening. She clung to his shoulders and sucked in a sharp breath as he eased inside of her.

“Fuck, girl,” he seethed and hung his head.

The curtain of his hair fell against Sansa’s cheeks as he rested his forehead against hers. At first, he moved at a languid pace, pulling his length out to the tip before gliding back in. Sansa matched the cadence he set and rolled her hips against each thrust. Her arms circled his broad shoulders and she marveled at the way he filled her up, the pressure at her clit, and the weight of him on top of her. Even her wildest fantasies of him fell short of the reality now.

He eased up to kneel and, with the crook of Sansa’s knees hooked on the inside of his elbows, Sandor spread her legs further apart. He bit his bottom lip hard with a loud grunt as he watched the way he moved in and out of her, his shaft slick and Sansa taking as much of him inside as she could.

Her eyes squeezed shut and the solid thud of her heart came disjointed with her frantic breaths. The sensations burst against the black behind her eyes as Sansa cried out and her peak surged through her.

When she opened her eyes again, she pulled Sandor towards her with an ardent and primitive desire to feel his weight on top of her again. Lost in pleasure, Sandor obliged and leaned forward with his palms on either side of her shoulders as he drove himself deeper inside of her.

Sansa cupped both of his cheeks, but he pulled away slightly as if by instinct; perhaps he’d never let a woman touch the burned side of his face, or maybe he wasn’t accustomed to the kind of intimacy Sansa sought to establish between them.

She kept her eyes open, matched to his, and held onto him like a lover would. He relented and leaned his burned cheek into her palm. With that simple gesture, they turned a corner from the pure pursuit of carnal pleasure and fell into a rhythm as one.

As Sansa kept his gaze, Sandor’s pace slowed and, when he leaned forward, the way he kissed her changed too with the passion behind it seeking more than just release. He collapsed to his forearm and caressed her cheek.

“You feel so good, little bird,” he panted against her mouth. “You gonna sing again for me, hmm?”

Her arms coiled tighter around his shoulders. She drew Sandor close and nodded with a breathy moan that he interrupted with another soft kiss, sweet on her lips and even more so sheltered in her heart.

_I want you. I want all of you._

Thoughts a dizzying mess mismatched to her tongue, the only words Sansa could manage were poor consolation to how her heart wanted him in ways she hadn’t acknowledged until now.

“More. Please. God, more,” was all she could muster, and Sandor lifted himself from her with a throaty chuckle, not recognizing the way she longed to be closer to him.

He flipped Sansa around and guided her to all fours. Once more, she obliged on her hands and knees. From behind, he buried himself inside of her and Sansa collided to her forearms, forgetting all about what her heart wanted. Now all she wanted was this. More. Harder. All of him.

Sandor pumped in a faster rhythm and Sansa gripped the sheets and threw her head back with a resounding moan. His hands circled her waist as he thrust, his hips slamming into her backside.

“You want more?” he rumbled on a seething breath. “Say it again. Tell me you wanna be fucked hard.”

“Please,” Sansa begged and sang with rising ecstasy that threatened to break upon her now.“Fuck me, please!”

With one hand, Sandor gathered up the length of Sansa’s hair and gave a firm yank. The other hand pressed her into the mattress as he thrust deep inside of her. Another blinding release came hard and quick for Sansa. She buried her face in the mattress that dampened her cry. Her knees slid apart and every part of her felt like it was coiling and uncoiling and pulsing around him.

As Sansa rode the long wave of dazzling pleasure with her vision a blur and limbs numb, Sandor quickly pulled himself out of her. He took his cock in hand and, with a few quick strokes, thundered his own release, head tossed back, his long hair sweeping down his back. He gripped her hip for purchase as warm liquid splattered Sansa’s back all the way up to her shoulder blades.

With her cheek pressed against the pillow, Sansa didn’t move and listened as Sandor caught his breath behind her. When he hadn’t stirred or said anything, she lifted her head from the mattress and turned over her shoulder. For a moment, he simply chuckled with eyes closed and a smile Sansa hadn’t yet seen on him.

In a clumsy fall, Sandor hunched over her and planted kisses to her cheek. When Sansa turned to search out his lips, he’d already removed himself from the bed and strode into the hall. She collapsed to her stomach, too spent and her limbs unable to bear her weight any longer as a luscious hum coursed through her body that was covered in a sheen of sweat.

Sandor returned with a hand towel from the bathroom and wiped his seed from her back before tossing the towel to the floor. He flopped next to her and propped his arms behind his head with his lips lifted in a sated grin.

When he closed his eyes, Sansa studied his face in the soft yellow light. His hooked nose now sported a subtle line where the bridge had healed up slightly crooked from the break. Stubble dusted his chin and his cheekbones appeared sharper up close. A handsome man and a lover like she never could’ve imagined, Sansa couldn’t take her eyes off him. But it was a different kind of desire that drew her closer and scooting across the rumpled bed linens between them.

Sandor cracked an eye open, and his brows knit together in fleeting confusion that quickly vanished.

“Come here,” he grumbled and reached one arm over to scoop her up and tuck her against his side. His fingertips traced her spine and Sansa nuzzled her cheek against his chest. Her palm rested against his breastbone and Sansa watched the rise and fall of her hand slow. Just when she thought he was well on his way to slumber, Sandor’s mouth crooked in another smile.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he said with sleep quick upon him whether he liked it or not. “We won’t be sleeping much tonight.”

He kissed her forehead and, with his arm draped over her side, pulled her nearer in what Sansa decided was a hallmark of his affection.

The thrill of it all left her faintly lightheaded but wide awake now and back to where she had begun—enthralled and fearful. That fear had taken on a different shape, no longer conceived from anticipation and mystery of what was to come.

All had been revealed now, and Sansa should’ve known it would happen this way. As she watched him fall asleep, it felt like tossing her heart to the wind, soaring and sailing and worrying about the eventual fall; how bad it might hurt, or perhaps the coming down wouldn’t be so painful and she’d find a soft place to land in his good graces.

In his letters to her, Sandor had issued a ribald warning—he wanted her in this way and would take her as he just had. Sansa probably should’ve issued a warning of her own—her heart had ended up back on her sleeve, even though it had been so thoroughly broken, and he needed to take care because she never had learned the art of loving just a little. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God…you know, I still get shy posting smut…but not shy enough to fade to black on the sex scenes, so there you have it! 
> 
> WOW! Thank you all so much for hanging in for this moment! They wasted no time in consummating this relationship, but the plexiglass-melting force of their sexual attraction was bound to need an outlet immediately! 
> 
> Anyway, thank you ENDLESSLY for the love and support! It really does brighten my day and leave me routinely speechless. I am grateful for you! Whether you comment, kudos, or quietly enjoy, it all means so much to me and I appreciate every one of you. Thank you for letting me share this story with you!
> 
> See you next week where we find out if these two lovebirds manage to make it out of bed and, if so, just how far before they’re back at it again! 
> 
> A spoiler for next week...grab your binoculars. We’re going on a field trip.


	11. Night Moves

Dawn broke on a new day and it might as well have been another reality. Sandor couldn’t retrace the path that brought him here. Pastel hues drenched the bedroom in the murky light of fresh morning. He looked over to Sansa, peaceful in her sleep and her auburn hair fanned across the pillow. With her back to him, he reveled in the dip of her waist, the slope of her hip; her smooth skin and gentle heart that’d already made a place for him.

Throughout the night, she had offered him foreign tenderness he hadn’t incorporated in his fantasies of her. The best he’d hoped for was her trust, enough to let him into her bed. The bit about her heart was another matter.

The danger in fulfilled fantasies, Sandor knew, was that they had a funny way of being lackluster. It only occurred to him in hindsight that he might’ve prepared himself for that possibility on his drive to Devil Creek. It wouldn’t have mattered, and he wouldn’t have needed a preempt to disappointment.

Nothing about Sansa had disappointed and he realized now how thoroughly he had undersold the girl in his imaginings—the way she moved, talked, laughed, and loved. Above all, he’d gravely miscalculated the swift and firm hold she had on him, and Sandor’s own heart was in quite the quandary too.

Content to sort it out later, he and Sansa rose and washed up in the shower where they took the time for languid exploration. In the heat of the night, Sandor had consumed Sansa like a wild tonic that wholly inebriated. He wasn’t a man of God, but now found reason to worship on Sunday morning. And worship he did; testifying to all the sinful ways he’d indulge in her, and each panting breath and resounding moan was a covenant between them.

Out of the shower, Sandor had gotten another glimpse of Sansa when she led him to an unused bedroom and dug through the closet for one of her brother’s t-shirts.

Sansa never boasted about her distant past, but the room spoke where her humility didn’t. Trophies and tiaras lined shelves on the wall that held framed pictures of Sansa dolled up and smiling with light that damn near rivaled the sun. On the back of the door, a Miss Texas sash hung faded and precarious on a hook like a sad endnote to a dead dream.

He didn’t ask about it, and she didn’t tell, but the stories gathered in the corner of the room like cobwebs, vacant artifacts of what used to be. Sansa found a white t-shirt that held the greatest promise of fitting him and kissed him sweetly.

By the time Sandor got dressed, brushed out and dried his hair, and wandered into the kitchen, Sansa had already dug out fixings for breakfast; everything she could find and anything he wanted. She announced she’d feed him right today and approached the task with as much zealous tenacity as she did her lovemaking.

Sandor sat at the kitchen table with his back against the wall. Crossed at the ankle, he stretched out his legs and folded his hands over his middle. His gaze fixed on Sansa and followed her as she moved gracefully about the kitchen. He already knew she was the kind of woman who relished taking care of her man, but he still marveled at the propensity.

Sansa fried him up steak and eggs and chattered a mile a minute about the rabbits getting into her garden and projects she planned for the house. He’d only cleared half his plate when she heaped bacon on it and planted a kiss on his cheek. She made her coffee strong, pancakes sweet, and Sandor studied her now over the brim of his mug.

“This is my mother’s recipe,” she told him with a mixing bowl balanced on her hip. As she whisked the batter, her voice trilled like a bright song in the small kitchen. She gave him an equally luminous smile. “I just adore lemon cakes.”

The whisk whipped quicker in the bowl, and Sansa didn’t seem to notice the bits of batter that flung against the apron around her waist. She gazed at him with dreamy distraction, a look Sandor had seldom received from a woman. When he had, they were usually drunk and looking for a man who knew how to fuck.

Head resting against the wall, Sandor cracked a smile.

“What?” Sansa beamed and turned half-way to the counter where she upended the mixing bowl over a greased pan but still kept Sandor’s eyes.

“You’re a good woman.”

“Thank you,” she laughed and ran a spatula around the bowl. While she picked up on the sincerity of his statement, the gravity hadn’t sunk in.

Good girls were a dime a dozen in Texas. They loved Jesus and took care of their families. They got married and had babies and lived their lives in quiet desperation. They smiled nice on Sundays and had enough manners to judge harshly behind closed doors. Good girls didn’t appeal to Sandor, and perhaps that’s what Sansa thought he meant.

Good women stepped out of the shadow and sham of the good girl—brave enough to stand on their own when it wasn’t the easier path; strong enough to not compromise compassion or turn cruel; and generous enough to love deeply and sincerely. And sometimes they made their man lemon cakes too.

If ever there was a good woman, Sansa was one of them, and Sandor contemplated her now with mounting fondness. She popped the pan into the oven and spun around to him. The skirt of her yellow sundress and the frilly bottom of her apron swirled about her legs as she held out the spatula covered in batter.

“Do you want to lick it?” she asked with exuberance at sharing this part of the baking ritual with him.

With the way the girl talked about lemon cakes, Sandor deduced the great honor it was to be offered the spatula. He shook his head and, in deliberate movements, sat up from the wall and planted his feet to the floor. Sansa’s plush lips parted with an almost indiscernible gasp that meant she knew damn well what was coming, enough that she tossed the spatula into the mixing bowl.

“No, I wanna lick you.” He leaned forward and corralled Sansa by her hips. A sweet blush surfaced on her cheeks, and she settled between his legs with her hands resting on his shoulders.

“You’ve been licking me plenty,” she giggled and bit her bottom lip as Sandor’s palms ran up the back of her thighs and beneath her skirt.

He matched her blue eyes gone wide with what he understood now was doe-eyed anticipation—innocent enough to allure, but not so much that she’d refuse all the ways he meant to bring her pleasure. That was another distinction between a good woman and a good girl. A good woman shouldered no shame in being properly fucked.

“I intend to lick you more and in places you haven’t thought of yet.”

Sansa’s smile hadn’t diminished, and she didn’t flinch, though Sandor wondered if she truly knew what he meant. He gripped her ass that was firm and pert and wasn’t so small that it’d disappear in his palms. When he massaged it, Sansa closed her eyes with a sigh. That alone was proof she’d like what he had in mind, whether she realized it or not.

He turned Sansa around and urged her to sit on his lap. One hand cupped her breast, and the other swept her hair from her shoulder where Sandor trailed kisses. As his lips meandered up her neck, she sunk into him and her hands clutched his forearm.

“In the meantime,” he grumbled against her ear and sucked the lobe.

Sandor lifted Sansa from his lap, and she turned over her shoulder with a tantalizing smile when his hands dipped beneath her skirt once more. He slid her underwear down her thighs and let it fall to the floor.

“Lift your skirt and bend over.”

With his subtle command, Sandor gently nudged her towards the counter. She rested her forearms against the edge and walked backwards until bent at the waist. Sandor stood enough to grab the seat of the chair and drag it across the kitchen to settle behind Sansa.

She lifted her skirt and gathered it around her waist but said nothing. For a moment, he mistook her silence as trepidation. Throughout the night, Sandor had confused that reticence as fear until he realized, while Sansa wasn’t inexperienced, she hadn’t been with a man like him; one who paid attention to all the gorgeous sounds she made and recognized both the challenge and reward in bringing her pleasure.

Sansa swiveled her head over her shoulder with anticipation already tugging her lips into a coy smile. Sandor smoothed his hands over her ass again and admired once more its perfection; how it begged to be kissed and licked. He lifted one finger and traced the slit between her perfect pink lips peeking between her legs and, while he wanted nothing more than to slide the length of his hard cock between those supple lips, this wasn’t about him.

His mouth lavished her firm ass with attention, tongue tracing the shapely slope down to where the cheek met her leg. The tip of his tongue parted her folds in one tender lick that earned him a breathy exhale from Sansa.

“Spread your legs,” he muttered against her lower lips that were soaked and warm, the taste of her faintly sweet and to be savored.

Savor he did; as much for his own enjoyment as hers with kisses just a prelude to the flick of his tongue. Sansa collapsed further against the counter, her forehead resting on her folded arms and her moans came muffled. Sandor gripped her hips and sucked on each lip before his tongue teased its way to her clit.

Lost in the symphony of sounds she made—each more irresistible than the last—the heat between her legs, the wet flush against his lips, Sandor groaned and something about the rumble in his chest drove her wild. Sansa’s legs trembled and fell further apart, and he swore she’d fall to the ground if it weren’t for the grasp he had on her. She ground against him, hips rolling to meet every lick, and her head fell back with a loud cry.

Sandor pulled his mouth away and slid two fingers inside of her.

“You gonna come hard for me, little bird?” he panted with quick, shallow strokes of his fingers and filled with awe at the cascading length of her hair down her back and her beautiful face contorted in ecstasy when she turned around to look at him.

“Please,” Sansa gasped. “I want you! Please!” she cried out and pulsed around his fingers, tighter and wetter with her climax.

Sandor chuckled because no woman had ever begged so sweetly for him to fuck them. “No, you have to wait.”

His fingers were drenched, and he sucked on them to savor her taste. Chest heaving and her cheeks crimson red, Sansa turned around to Sandor again and, whether she meant to or not, a soft whine eased from her lips and her eyes flicked to his cock straining against his pants.

“Is that not enough?” His tongue delved between her soaked folds once more and circled her opening that she so badly wanted fucked. “You want another?”

Sansa wasn’t too proud to nod and ease her ass forward once more in shy command but was perhaps too polite to beg him to bury himself inside of her. Sandor went to work between her legs, his thumb lightly stroking her swollen clit and each swipe of his tongue casting its own rhythm. Where she might’ve tempered herself before, Sansa tossed her inhibitions aside now. She gripped the edge of the counter and arched her back. Her body loosened as she rolled her hips against his lips with untamed abandon now.

Her second peak came quicker but harder too and ended with a heavy sigh as she crumpled to the counter. Sandor stood from the chair and bent forward to kiss Sansa’s cheek. Eyes closed, she gave a sleepy smile and hummed softly. When she eased from the counter, Sansa smoothed down her skirt and apron, and Sandor handed Sansa her underwear.

“What about you?” she cooed and snaked her arms around his middle.

He brushed the hair from her cheek and his palms cupped both sides of her neck.

“You’re sweet. I’ll give you a ride later and we’ll call it even. How’s that?”

For Sandor, a woman’s come down from passion normally meant reality setting in again with distant civility that bordered on being cold. He never minded much and dished it out too, and it seemed a more honest existence. With Sansa, her release beckoned warmth and a desire to be nearer. He held her in his arms that slipped to the small of her back.

“I love that idea,” she whispered, but every bit of her was possessed with something of the heartfelt. She spoke with softness that carried the weight of so much behind it. 

“Me too.” Sandor dipped his head and parted her lips with his tongue in a heated kiss. He lacked her command of loving words and tried to make up for that deficit in other ways. Only now, it occurred to him it might not be enough, so he held her tighter. “Better get those lemon cakes outta the oven,” Sandor murmured against her mouth. “I wouldn’t want all your hard work to go to waste.”

“It wouldn’t be a waste.” She smiled, rolled to her toes to deliver a soft kiss, and pulled her lemon cakes from the oven. 

As she poured a glaze over the cake, Sansa chirped about wanting a picnic and gazed with childlike wonderment out the kitchen window at the clear blue sky and big cotton ball clouds ambling across. And because Sandor was well down the unpaved path of giving her anything she wanted, he agreed with a doting smile. She squealed and bounced over to him with unbridled joy at something so simple. It occurred to Sandor then that he could do far worse than to be with a woman who cherished such small pleasures with boundless delight.

Sansa packaged up slices of lemon cake and hummed happily to herself, perhaps unaware of how Sandor observed her and how he wanted her now in a way he hadn’t expected but probably should’ve seen coming. A blinding epiphany, he understood now all the ways she wanted him closer. He wanted it too.

When she was finished, Sansa kissed him on the cheek and dug out a gingham blanket. It matched the lining of her picnic basket she handed off to him. On the way out the door, Sandor retrieved his Stetson and secured it on his head. He loaded the basket, heavy with the whiskey bottle and sweet wine, and blanket into the bed of his truck and helped Sansa into the passenger seat. The heat and humidity broke today, and the sun dipped behind voluminous clouds that raced across the sky. Sandor’s truck rumbled down the empty neighborhood street.

As the radio hummed low, they rolled down the windows. The warm breeze whipped through the truck and lifted Sansa’s hair as she giggled at half the things he said. Sandor never pegged himself as humorous, just observant of other people’s buffoonery. His quips now made more appearances than usual, anything to encourage Sansa’s laughter or bring on her smiles.

Sandor followed Sansa’s directions down a narrow country road heading out of town. The corn fields reached high, almost ripe for harvest, and beyond the farms, a thin grove of trees poked from the horizon.

“Right over there!” Sansa shifted forward in her seat and pointed to a hill crest dusted in green and gold.

Sandor followed and, atop the hill, pulled off the road and onto the grass. He killed the engine and hopped from the truck to circle around to the passenger side.

“I’ve been here before,” Sansa confessed with breathless and hushed wonder as if sharing a piece of herself she didn’t usually offer up. She took his hand and paid him a delicate smile, but her eyes lit up.

“I figured as much,” Sandor chuckled and carried the picnic basket.

Sansa led the way along the hill’s ridge, weaving through the trees and down to a flat bed of grassless earth beneath an old oak. Its full canopy rustled in the wind as she shook out the blanket and laid it on the ground. She slipped out of her shoes and, when she sat down, patted the spot next to her.

“I see why you like it here,” Sandor commented and took his place by her side. He tilted his head to the view painted before them—green hills that rippled lush towards the horizon; yellow fields with symmetric lines running across; and the shadow of clouds rolling over.

_This is freedom._

He breathed the warm air, sweetened with Sansa’s perfume and redolent in earthen headiness. He listened to the song of the trees with veneration he’d never paid before. Sandor had lost years of his life but gained an appreciation in that time and it offered the chance to earn back what’d been taken from him.

“My sister and I used to come here when our father visited the farmer who lives right down there.”

Sansa pointed to the farmland in the valley below and seemed overcome with a bought of nostalgia. Sandor didn’t quite know if those memories were welcome or not, so he eased back on his elbows and didn’t ask after it.

Sansa unpacked the picnic basket and set out the lemon cakes. She handed off the whiskey to him with a sultry smile and uncorked the bottle of strawberry wine that she poured into a plastic cup.

Sandor took a swig of whiskey and relished the warmth that spread down his chest. The sun drenched through a break in the clouds and cast Sansa in a halo that lit up her hair in red and gold. With her serene gaze scanning the landscape, Sandor studied the doll-like features of her face, both stunning and feminine.

He’d never seen a woman like her before, and half the time wondered if she’d been ripped from a forgotten dream. It wasn’t just her soft lips, the upturned slope of her nose, full rosy cheeks, or radiant blue eyes. Sansa possessed something of the ethereal, an ability to shift the room or fill up a space with unending light. Moth to a flame, he followed her deeper into whatever they’d discovered with one another and trusted she knew the way.

As if remembering herself, Sansa exhaled a relaxed sigh and served up the lemon cake on bone china plates. Cross-legged, she turned to Sandor and fed him a forkful. Even if he hadn’t liked it, he wouldn’t have the heart to tell her; not with how she waited on exuberant and splendid breath for his approval. He didn’t have to lie. Sansa had mastered the bedroom and apparently the kitchen too.

“It’s good,” he mumbled through a mouthful of cake that was light and sweet.

Sansa bounced in place and clapped her hands, and Sandor didn’t know what was more enticing—the way her tits bounced in her low-cut sundress or the way she veritably glowed with a smile. She lovingly fed him another bite before turning to her own plate.

“Keep feeding me like this and you’re gonna give me a heart attack, woman.” Sandor lifted one brow and polished off the last of his lemon cake.

Sansa tossed her hair behind her shoulders and licked a bit of glaze from the corner of her mouth before Sandor could. 

“My momma always said a well-fed man is a well-loved man,” she declared with a fair bit of pride.

“Winning over my heart through my stomach?” Sandor laughed and removed his Stetson. He pinned its brim to the ground with the whiskey bottle and laid back on the blanket.

Sansa bit her bottom lip and gave a shy nod. She turned to him with her knees drawn together and propped herself up on the heel of her hand. One slender finger traced the blanket’s weave.

“There are a few other entry points to my heart, darlin’.” With his hands resting behind his head, Sandor stared up at the sunlight filtering through the tree’s canopy. “You already found one. This is just a mighty fine extra.”

“Are you saying I’ve won your heart?” Sansa asked with a bright smile blooming across her lips. She laid down next to him with her elbow sunk against the blanket and her head resting in her palm.

Sandor turned to her with a smirk. “Might be.”

It wasn’t like him to so freely admit something like this, but he imagined it came with the territory of a woman like Sansa. Some part of him still clung to secrecy. Locked away for so many years, he’d had plenty of time to explore his own depths. Now that he’d come up for air, it seemed best to leave those parts in the abyss below.

Sandor rolled to his side, propped up to mirror Sansa. When he cupped her cheek, she closed her eyes that were framed by long, dark lashes. She hadn’t fussed with her makeup today and, while she stunned last night, the innocent simplicity held just as much allure for Sandor.

“Beauty queen and a bull rider,” he muttered as his thumb swept along her cheekbone where a smattering of faint freckles had appeared against flawless skin. 

“ _Former_ beauty queen,” she gently corrected and opened her eyes. She scooted closer and traipsed her fingertips over the fabric of the white t-shirt stretching tight across his chest. 

“ _Former_ bull rider,” he added and gazed at her as she quietly contemplated him. “Aren’t we a pair?”

“I certainly think so,” she whispered in sullen revelation, as if it were subject to ridicule or debate.

He brushed his fingers through her silky hair in tender strokes. “No word to the contrary from me.”

Sandor pulled Sansa towards him. He drew a slow breath before delivering a leisurely kiss against her lips that were sweet with sugar glaze.

“Why did you give it up?” Sansa asked when she pulled away and fixed her eyes on him.

Sandor chuckled and she mimicked him with a nervous laugh, though she couldn’t know the source of his bitter mirth. He’d hoped to avoid this bit and that her curiosity of this subject had been well-sated by now.

“It was just time to move on. I couldn’t do it anymore.” Sandor glanced at Sansa who listened in rapt, collecting every word he spoke as if it were a treasure.

He wasn’t so dense as to not know what she was after. Sansa wasn’t a voyeur looking to peel away parts better left alone. Her curiosity was genuine and well-placed and a product of wanting to be closer to him. And he’d meant what he said—he’d already let her into his heart—but she was perceptive enough to know that there were parts boarded up and abandoned. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to see inside. The best Sandor could offer was the gist of it and hope that was enough.

“My mother died when I was young, as you know,” he began, but the words still stuck like molasses in his throat. “I lost my father fairly young too. I left home as soon as I could with one goal in mind—get as far away from my brother as possible.”

Sandor paused. He’d never told Sansa his brother’s name and supposed he wouldn’t start now. He always believed that people died two deaths—first in body and then in name. Time wipes clean the legacy of most, and a person truly perishes when no one utters their name again. Generations pass with no one left to remember and the name dies, as if the person never lived. For his brother, Sandor did his part to deliver that second death.

Sansa slipped her hand in his and cast a sympathetic smile. “You think it’d be easy to get away from someone in Texas.”

“You’d think,” Sandor huffed. “Our worlds collided in the bull riding circuit. Seeing him at rodeos and having our names associated with one another, it was a constant reminder that I was bound to that monster by blood. It was burning me up with rage that would’ve ruined me. In a way, the war saved me. It plucked me out of that maelstrom, and sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve turned into if I hadn’t been drafted.”

Sandor shook his head to knock out the thought and gave a resounding sigh but intervened before Sansa could find her words. 

“What about your family?” he asked and brought her hand to his lips where he kissed each knuckle. “Seems like you don’t see much of them.”

Sansa shrugged and dropped her eyes to the sliver of space between them.

“They come around when they can. I try to be the connection back home for them, the port in the storm whenever they need it.”

She lifted her eyes again with the expectant vulnerability of someone who’d just offloaded a secret. Where Sandor ignored the inconvenient excerpts of his past, Sansa sugarcoated hers with brightly spoken words and honey smiles. He saw the sadness in her eyes well enough.

“And who’s your port in the storm?”

Her shoulders stiffened and back straightened with tension, hardening up because that’s how she’d been getting by.

“Sometimes you have to weather it on your own.”

Sandor nodded, though he didn’t like the thought of that for her one bit. “I know the feeling.”

A doleful smile played on her lips but disappeared as Sansa continued.

“My parents didn’t have much to their name, but what they left behind was enough for my younger siblings to go to college or pursue their dreams. It’s important to me that they have those opportunities; to leave home and try at something that makes them happy. We’re all scattered. I think that’s natural when you have a big family. 

“Arya goes on adventures. Rickon is wild now that he’s got some freedom. Bran is dedicated to his studies. Jon came back from war not quite right. I worry about him the most.”

She didn’t have to say it. Concern lined Sansa’s face, drawing her lips into a frown and folding her brows together. She stared towards the golden fields as a cloud passed overhead and spilled shadows where the light had been.

“He’s worthy of the worry, I’m sure,” Sandor replied honestly because there wasn’t much sense in talking around these horrors. “Most men never came back; some not at all, others just an echo of who they once were.”

Sansa nodded with genuine understanding. “And where does that leave you?”

No one had ever asked him that. Only Griff and Bronn knew Sandor well enough to discern the delta between the man who left for war and the one who came back. Sandor never spent much time sorting out what parts he left in Vietnam, if they were the good ones or bad ones or maybe a mix of both.

“Somewhere in the middle,” he replied, yet another truth. “And reclaiming what I can.”

Sansa surveyed his face with a fair bit of trepidation and a question formed on her lips but disappeared as she thought it over. The cycle repeated a few times more before she finally breathed life into whatever was on her mind.

“What was war like for you?”

Her eyes widened and lips parted as if anticipating outright refusal from him. She was right to hesitate on this question and perceptive enough to know not to go asking just anyone, but Sandor considered it a hallmark of trust; that she felt secure enough in his presence to ask things that her manners normally wouldn’t let her.

Despite that show of trust, he was the one now hesitating and clambering to rise to the occasion and meet her on the hallowed ground where she now stood; a vacant space on which to build with one another and it meant they both had to show up.

“Hot and scary,” was what he settled on because the words failed him, and he realized now how little he thought of it and how he talked of it even less. “I wasn’t supposed to come back.”

“Says who?” Sansa countered firmly and shifted closer. Sandor steadied his hand in the dip of her waist. 

“Fate, I guess,” he rumbled with misplaced laughter and voiced a memory that had never passed his lips and he couldn’t reconcile why he chose this one. “We went through a village once. There was this fruit cart selling shit I hadn’t ever seen before. The vendor didn’t speak a lick of English. I had no idea what any of the fruit was, so I called my buddy over who’d been in country longer than I had. He pointed out a few things, native fruits and whatnot, but I got called back by my commander. Not ten steps from that cart, the vendor, a VC sympathizer, blew himself up with a grenade and took my friend with him. I survived with just a few bruises and a headache.”

Sandor gnawed his bottom lip and squeezed his eyes shut. In the past, when he retraced the event, all he ever really got was the sticky spray of foreign fruit, the sound of splintered wood hitting soggy earth, and the daze of smoke and screams. In all this time, he’d never put the full narrative together and the guilt he carried was somehow divorced from it all, a nebulous mass never tethered to anything real.

Her hand at the burned side of his face pulled him back and Sandor opened his eyes, anchored to reality with Sansa staring at him with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Sandor, I’m so sorry,” she whispered on a tremulous voice. “None of that was your fault. There’s no way you could’ve known.”

“I know it wasn’t my fault,” he soothed but never would believe it; not truly, and not enough to stamp out the burden of responsibility. “After too many close calls, it’s easy to believe the reaper’s got your number.”

Sandor wiped away her tears in one soft sweep of his fingertips and marveled at Sansa’s beauty once more and her heart that bled for others. Pretty when she cried, her lips were plump and eyes dazzling blue. Her strength shone through too and she lifted her hand to cover over his palm at her cheek. Sandor watched something solidify in her, a calm resilience that would never fail to captivate him.

“You’re meant to be here,” she affirmed, deliberate but gentle at the same time; a combination he hadn’t known could exist. “In this moment. Right here with me. I know neither of us believe much in God, but I have to believe there are reasons for things. The timing has to work out, all the decisions we make guiding us to the points of significance in our life.”

Sandor sat up slowly and Sansa did too. They sat face-to-face and he leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers.

“This is significant,” he murmured against her lips, the distillate of all he wanted to say to her.

Her arms snaked around his neck and she pressed her lips to his in a loving kiss; one he knew well enough was meant to drive the pain away and overtake it with compassion, a light in the darkness.

“Well, this is certainly the heaviest picnic I’ve ever been on,” Sandor japed with an exhaled laugh against her mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa sighed and broke with a smile. With her forehead now resting in her palm, she shook her head and peered at him from beneath her lashes. 

“Don’t be,” Sandor assured and grabbed the whiskey bottle. “Too many people can’t talk about things like this. They stay on the surface because they think it’s safer that way.”

He took a swig from the bottle and handed it over to Sansa. “Now that I’ve bared my soul, what about you? I saw all those tiaras and trophies gathering dust in that room of yours, Miss Texas.”

In a communion of sorts, she took the bottle from him and pressed it to her lips in a delicate sip. Her face contorted when she swallowed it down and she coughed as she handed it back to him. A breeze swept through their sanctuary and Sansa breathed it in with a deep inhale and quietly exhaled through parted lips.

“Just like you,” she said. “It was time to move on. For me, all the lights and glamor of city life sounded like a dream; enough that I hitched out of town with the first sham of a cowboy who came my way. And it was a dream for a while; just not mine. When you’re trapped in someone else’s dream, it has an awful way of turning into a nightmare.”

Sandor nodded and observed as Sansa wrung her hands together in her lap. Her skin flushed, and she flashed a flustered smile that dissolved almost as soon as it formed. There she went again—talking in circles around something that Sandor had only passing knowledge of. He stared at her and lifted his brows in a gesture for her to continue.

“Joffrey was a monster,” she said so quietly Sandor swore she believed that saying the man’s name would manifest him. “He really was. Shame kept me chained to him. I left this town high and mighty—Miss Texas, beauty queen with big city dreams. I left behind all the tiaras that I swore were just poor consolation to what I really deserved. I paid for that arrogance and came back here thoroughly humbled, but better for it. To this day, I can’t believe I ever acted that way or that I stayed with him for so long.”

When her confession was done, Sansa averted her eyes and busied her hands by pouring herself more wine, but her fingers shook and the liquid splattered. Sandor took the bottle and poured it for her. A storm of shame and fear seemed to take hold in her, and now Sandor found himself helpless at how to vanquish it.

“It’s not a sin to put faith in the wrong people,” he offered. “It’s only if you leave it there. You didn’t.”

Sansa grew quiet as she sipped her wine and contemplated his words that seemed poor comfort now. When she matched his eyes, Sandor saw she’d regained her resolve. 

“You asked me if I’m scared and the answer is yes,” she said. “I’d walled off some part of my heart just to survive, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to bring that wall down again. I never wanted to turn cold because of the things he put me through. I was afraid that if I found someone worthy of my heart—someone like you—I wouldn’t have it all to give.”

Sansa unearthed what Sandor had already surmised in her, but he saw it plain as day now as the clouds cleared overhead and blue sky triumphed. She feared losing herself to others or to the world, just as he had; bits and pieces of their beings broken off and left behind with war and heartache and all the shadow spaces of life. Sansa Stark had been after her own reclamation, it seemed.

“Well,” Sandor drew out the word and interlaced his fingers with hers. “What’s the verdict?”

“It’s all there. I still wear my heart on my sleeve, just a little more cautiously.” She paused for a moment and gazed at him from beneath her lashes. “I suppose you can have it all.”

The nonchalance she put behind it was a ruse, of course. She’d just placed with him a rare jewel—precious, priceless, and more than he’d ever known—and entrusted its safety with him. If she were scared, he was right there with her and something in that togetherness soothed.

Sandor smiled and gathered her into his arms because, where she had all the pretty words, his language of adoration was the way he held her now, hard against his chest, the way his lips pressed against her forehead, and how, when he pulled away, he studied her mouth and flushed cheeks before meeting the doe-eyed gaze she gave him.

“That’s a lot of responsibility,” he quipped and kissed her cheek before murmuring in her ear. “How do you know I’m a responsible man?”

Sansa softened against him. “I don’t. That’s faith,” she whispered and kissed the tip of his nose. “Don’t make a sinner out of me.”

“I won’t.” His words came like a somber vow, but Sandor lightened it with a wry smile. “Not entirely. We’ve been fucking enough out of wedlock that I think some might call us sinners.”

A giggle passed Sansa’s lips, and she lit up again, along with the sun streaming through the trees on a sweet summer breeze.

“So, where does this leave you now?” Sandor asked through a faint smile as he admired her once more—the length of her bare legs, the dress creeping up her thighs, the soft curve of her breasts. “Are your other dreams gathering dust up on those shelves next to your tiaras?”

“No, not quite.” Sansa shook her head and bit her bottom lip as if to quell her exuberance at remembering the future was hers. “I just needed a place to land for a little while and this was it.” She turned a wistful gaze towards the amber fields that swayed in the wind. “And some time to heal.”

Sandor grabbed her by the waist and yanked her towards him. “How’s the healing going?”

He laid her down on the gingham blanket with her hair fanned beneath her. Sansa’s chest rose and fell with a quickened breath. Her arms draped around his neck as he settled on top of her, careful not to crush her beneath his weight.

“Better now,” she whispered, and her tongue ran along his bottom lip in a teasing gesture and, if she wanted to start something now, he intended to finish it.

Sandor lifted her dress up to the underside of her breasts. His hand smoothed over the taut expanse of her stomach and along the shape of her curves. He planted kisses down her abdomen and felt her tremble when he reached the band of her cotton panties.

“I could help,” he whispered against her skin and cupped her breast with one hand. His other hand softly snapped the band of her underwear as he gazed up at Sansa.

“Oh yeah?” she breathed, and her lips curled with a smile. She reached down and brushed the hair from Sandor’s cheek. “How do you plan to help?”

He left her question unanswered but matched her eyes and slid her underwear down her thighs and tossed it aside. In last night’s delirium of ardent urgency, he’d sacrificed some veneration of her body. He sat up to make amends for that and worshiped now with fingertips grazing her skin and his gaze ravishing the slit between her legs, full pink lips slick with desire.

Sandor gripped her thighs and encouraged them to spread. Sansa released a shaky sigh but ultimately obliged, though her skin flushed pink at being so exposed.

“You’re so pretty,” he breathed, lost in reverie at the sight of her.

He traipsed the tip of his tongue between her soaked folds and tenderly circled her clit. From this vantage point, he watched her head fall back against the blanket and her legs drifted further apart. She’d had the right of it—he’d licked her plenty all night and this morning too—but the act now felt more erotic for its intimacy with soft kisses and slow swipes and how he matched her eyes when she gazed down at him.

“Please. I want you now,” she whispered and faintly writhed against him. 

Sandor slid one finger inside and eased on top of her. His mouth swept against hers and his tongue parted her lips.

“I know you do. I can feel it,” he chuckled and relished each of her warm panting breaths against his mouth. “I wanna feel it here.” Sandor took her hand and guided it to his cock, hard and straining against his pants and in bad need of release.

Sansa gave an eager nod and her eyes blazed with fervent delight. Sandor kissed her forehead and sat up. He made quick work of his belt buckle and shoved his pants to his knees. He laid back on the blanket and Sansa bit her bottom lip as she eyed his cock standing upright and ready for her. A deep groan rumbled from Sandor’s throat as she straddled his thighs and, though he’d fucked her soundly throughout the night, Sansa eyed his dick with trepidation that hadn’t yet fled.

Sandor grabbed Sansa by the waist and encouraged her to rise on her knees. He slipped one hand into hers, fingers entwined, and wrapped the other hand around his shaft until only the tip and a few inches of his length were exposed. He slowly circled the tip against her opening.

Sansa released a moaning sigh and eased down on his cock, taking as much of him in as his hand would allow. In a bid to drive him wild, she rolled her hips and Sandor squeezed his eyes shut at the sensation—warm, wet, and tight around his tip. No woman had ever felt so good.

He opened his eyes again to Sansa peering down at him through lids heavy and a wicked smile. She wanted more and he wouldn’t deny her anything, least of all this. She rocked a little, enough to encourage him to uncurl two fingers and reveal more of his shaft.

Drenched between the legs, Sansa slid down the rest of his exposed length and her head lolled back with a whimpering moan. Her knees spread further apart along the blanket and she muttered something to the tree canopy up above. Sandor sucked in a sharp breath and pulled his hand away.

“You like taking all of me inside of you, don’t you?” he groaned and bucked his hips, just enough to drive more of his length into her.

Sansa gasped and nodded but eased up his cock as she leaned forward and rested her hands on his stomach. Her hair picked up on the breeze that stole another sigh from her lips.

“I know you do,” he rasped, his voice gritty and deep. “Hold up your dress. I wanna see.”

Sansa slowly lifted the skirt, revealing the treasure between her thighs with a blush sweeping across her cheeks. Sandor stared at her lower lips stretched around his cock that glistened from her wetness. Her eyes darkened as she watched him, and she slid the straps of her dress off her shoulders and unstrapped her bra to free her breasts that she cupped in her hands.

Sandor grunted and watched her touch herself, savoring the sight of her fingers working her nipples. He guided one of her hands to her clit and Sansa quickly swiped there. Sandor swept two fingers against her lips and into her mouth. Good girl that she was, Sansa sucked without him having to tell her, and he damn near lost himself when her eyes fluttered open and landed on him.

She knew what she was doing—touching herself in a soft sweep between her legs, sucking gently with her plush lips wrapped around his fingers, swiveling her hips with him inside of her. Sandor closed his eyes. He’d finish too soon if she kept it up. He listened to the breeze, focused on the rustling leaves, and steadied his breaths. It was subterfuge. He couldn’t do it. His mind snapped to Sansa slowly riding up and down his length, taking more of him in with each pass and quickening her pace.

“Just like that,” he groaned and pulled his fingers from her mouth to grip her hips. 

She found the rhythm that would ultimately undo him, and Sandor couldn’t help himself. He had no control. His eyes cracked open, and he drank in the sight of her riding his dick soaked from her wetness. He licked the pad of his thumb and replaced her fingers to run a tight circle over her clit. Sansa gasped at the contact and her hands sunk into her hair at the side of her head. She licked her lips and arched her back.

“You feel so good,” she exhaled shakily, and her words dissolved into a whimpering moan. She rode him with wild abandon, blissfully unconcerned that the farmer down the way or a passerby might hear.

The wide-open space swallowed up her cries and she breathed his name like a prayer. It all became too much—the feel of her tightening around his cock, the sight of her breasts bouncing, legs spread, another flush of her wetness as she came hard, and the way she collapsed to his chest, breathless and panting.

Sandor held her against him. His lips crashed against hers in a frantic kiss, his tongue sweeping against hers as he moaned into her mouth. He thrust deeper and his climax threatened to overtake him. Sandor broke the kiss long enough to lick his finger and reach down and around to where she was spread. His finger traced the tight bud of her asshole. With a sharp gasp, Sansa’s eyes snapped open, but her shock dampened to a breathy sigh.

“I’ll be gentle,” he muttered against her mouth as his breaths heaved from his chest. His balls tightened at the thought of all the ways he wanted to bring her pleasure, all the ways he’d make her sing and call out his name. “And maybe I’ll lick here too. You’d like that, hmm?”

Sandor applied light pressure in a tender touch and Sansa’s mouth hung agape as she desperately nodded, as if he’d unearthed new horizons she’d only heard of and hoped for but had never seen herself.

“God yes,” she breathed and regained the rhythm. With palms planted against the ground on either side of his head, Sansa rode him hard and chased after another climax, determined to take Sandor with her.

He expelled something between a moan and hearty laugh as she lost herself in the cadence, rolling her hips and gasping each breath.

“Fuck. You’re gonna make me come,” Sandor seethed, his body tensing tight as he held onto her hips with ecstasy unfurling in him.

His head fell back, and he squeezed his eyes shut with the blinding sensations slamming into him. A bellowing moan escaped him, and he almost forgot himself until Sansa rolled off and stroked him until his seed spilled into her palm.

In the dazed aftermath, Sandor stared up at the lush canopy and thick tree limbs above. He was only partially aware of Sansa wiping up the mess with a napkin and putting herself back to rights. He didn’t bother with his pants and left them around his knees to spend the last bit of energy he had to pulling Sansa next to his side.

“Come here. I wanna hold you,” he muttered.

She settled against him with a smile that barreled right into being giddy; the same satisfaction she had in stuffing him full of food and lavishing her doting affection on him. She gave a happy sigh and nestled her head in the crook of his shoulder. Sandor wrapped his arm around her and ran one hand over his face.

“Goddamn,” he breathed into his palm. “You sure are hell-bent on cooking and fucking your way into my heart, aren’t you?”

She laughed and Sandor shifted enough to gaze down at her. She was already staring back at him with misty-eyed adoration and perhaps another product of plucking her heart from her sleeve and handing it over to him. And what he said had only been half a joke—he took on the responsibility and hoped he could love her right. It wasn’t for a lack of desire, but fear of failure. The costs were too high, and he had no choice but to get it right.

“It’s working,” Sandor said against her lips and kissed her with as much tenderness as a man like him could offer.

When the kiss broke, they remained wrapped up in one another, listening to the birds chirping and the wind picking up around them. Sandor felt Sansa’s breaths even out to a peaceful rhythm. Though the sun still shone in rich golds, Sandor thanked the stars somewhere in the impending night sky for this moment, for the woman in his arms, and for the way his life was just beginning now.

Eventually, Sansa shifted and propped herself on her elbow.

“You should probably put your pants back on.” She laughed like a song, head tilted to the side and lovesick already. He wasn’t so far behind.

Sandor glanced down at his dick, now exposed for the whole world to see.

“I suppose you’re right,” he agreed and stood. When his pants fell to his ankles, he turned to the open wilderness in the valley down below, stretched out his arms, and spread his legs wide.

Sansa burst into laughter and Sandor turned over his shoulder and gave her a wink.

“I hope no one is bird watching,” he chuckled. “They’re gonna get an eyeful.”

Sandor pulled up his pants and fastened the buckle as Sansa packed up the picnic basket.

“Will you stay tonight too?” she asked with the blanket tucked under her chin as she folded it. Sandor snatched his hat from the ground and cracked a smile.

“If you’ll have me.” He put his hat on and strode towards Sansa. She tossed the folded blanket on top of the basket and settled in his arms.

“Eventually, I’ll have to go back home,” he said, pressed a kiss to her lips, and lightly tapped her ass. “But not tonight.”

They walked hand-in-hand up the hill, both drunk on merriment and one another and not much else. The whiskey and wine had gone relatively untouched, and it was a good thing it had. The two-lane road back towards town was just a vacant expanse that rose and fell with the soft slope of the terrain. The truck eased up a hill and, at the crest, Sandor saw the flashing lights of four cop cars off in the distance.

He cut the radio and slowed his speed, though he hadn’t been in a particular rush. Sansa stirred in the passenger seat and, where her cheeks had been flushed powder pink from laughter just a moment ago, her face now paled with joy extinguished.

“I wonder what happened,” she asked more than speculated. The fear rapidly pooled in her eyes and bid Sandor to skirt the messy truth that they both seemed to acknowledge in their own way.

“Probably just an accident.” He reached over and took her hand but knew damn well this wasn’t an accident. He didn’t have to be town folk to know this road wasn’t often traveled.

They neared the scene, but there was no car stuck in the ditch or wrapped around a tree. Instead, six uniformed officers huddled around something beneath a white sheet. As Sandor’s truck neared, a policeman jogged to the edge of the road and frantically waved Sandor on, a gesture to pick up speed, to keep going and not loiter.

He didn’t need to be told and pressed his foot to the pedal, but the sheet whipped up on a powerful gust of wind and revealed a bloody mess underneath. Sansa shrieked and, by protective instinct, Sandor’s hand flew up to cover her eyes.

“Look away, little bird!” he hollered, but it was too late. She’d already seen the body on the ground, the blood-stained grass, and insides torn out.

In horror and disbelief, tears welled in her eyes and Sansa covered her mouth with one hand as she heaved sharp, hyperventilated breaths. Sandor gripped the wheel and his thoughts raced as fast as the cornfields whizzing by.

Flying towards the scene, an unmarked police car tore past them—an odd-looking vehicle, hearse-like and matte black and with a portable warning light stuck to the roof and flashing red.

The rest of the drive commenced in a fog, the three minutes like three lifetimes as Sandor settled into the sickening reality of what they’d just seen. He pulled into Sansa’s driveway and shifted the truck into park but let the engine idle with the white noise an escape from dreadful silence.

He turned to Sansa who bit back tears that rolled down her cheeks anyhow and she swiped at them with a trembling hand. Sandor reached over and collected her, pulling her across the bench seat to his side.

“It just keeps happening,” she cried.

Sandor rested his chin on top of her head. Out the passenger window, he scanned the empty street, a horned owl perched on a nearby streetlamp, and the sky darkening with gray clouds rolling in.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

It was all he could think to say and served the dual purpose of comforting Sansa in the immediate and was his vow for the long road ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this chapter—such sweet romance (all but that last bit). These two...insatiable. If only this story was like the Magic School Bus, and we could all take a SanSan “birdwatching” trip to 1977, random field in Devil Creek, Texas. For science, of course, because everything is bigger in Texas, but I’ll believe that when I see it through my own binoculars.
> 
> Big shout out to Bwestwood for inspiring the hearse-like vehicle racing to the crime scene! Go, B, go! 
> 
> A quick announcement—in my posting schedule, I built in a one week break about halfway through this story. Next week, I will post chapter 12, then we’ll have a week off, and then back a week later with chapter 13. There are a couple reasons, not the least of which I edit extensively to ensure quality and want to get ahead on editing in anticipation of my work schedule picking up! Thank you for your understanding! 
> 
> Also, thank you all so much for the kindness you show me and for your support of my writing! Truly, it means the world to me! You all are the very best!
> 
> See you next week for Chapter 12, which was written when I was deep in my feelings about Sansa and Sandor!


	12. Little Wing

At a quarter past four in the afternoon, Griff knocked on the storm door in a rhythm Sandor had forgotten. The recollection came swift, and the door flung open with no more introduction. Poised at the kitchen sink, Sandor turned with a clear view of the door and Griff standing beneath it with a bouquet of white roses.

Sandor cracked a smile and flicked his hands over the sink to shake off the excess water before snatching up a towel.

“You shouldn’t have,” he cracked and motioned to the flowers as Griff crossed the living room and joined him in the kitchen. 

“I didn’t,” Griff chuckled, shoved the bouquet at Sandor, and patted him on the back. “Women like flowers.”

“Women don’t like flowers. Flowers die and beauty fades.” Sandor set the arrangement on the kitchen table covered with the only tablecloth he could find. With its holly berry and pine needle pattern, it was meant for Christmas, but would have to do.

He was right about the flowers, though Griff wouldn’t admit it. The man was old-fashioned, times were changing, and white flowers were especially prone to going brown along the edges. Griff didn’t look so certain and eyed the bouquet with its blue ribbon cinched around the stems.

“Charming,” Griff commented on an amused huff. “Here’s some advice—keep that thought to yourself tonight.” From behind his back, he produced a bottle of bourbon that gleamed like an amber gem. “This is for you.”

Sandor accepted the bourbon with more graciousness than he had the flowers and admired the bottle in his hands—the weight of it, the sound of liquid sloshing, the label’s gilded print, the anticipation of its spice and bite on his tongue.

He gave the bottle a shake with a broad smile. “This is more like it. Thank you.” Sandor set the bourbon down and resumed his place at the counter chopping vegetables. “You can keep your advice, though. I do just fine.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that,” Griff grumbled.

In his sheriff’s uniform, he leaned against the wall, but poked his head into the living room. Sandor had cleared the space of all the crap Bronn collected over the years. Clearing out stacks of magazines and newspapers was the price he paid for Bronn keeping an eye on the place. Sandor liked his house like he liked his life—simple, free from the extraneous, and everything having a purpose. That didn’t leave room for much.

“The place looks nice,” Griff said and crossed his arms over his chest. The gold badge pinned to his front pocket caught the kitchen light.

“Thanks,” Sandor sighed and cut celery in strips, methodical but slow with the knife. His hands were out of practice and knives dull.

Griff quietly observed and, for a moment, Sandor assumed he was about to break his balls. Here he was with a clean house, candles strategically placed throughout, doing his damnedest to cobble together a meal worthy of Sansa Stark, and dressed in the nicest shirt he owned. He had even polished his boots. Sandor wouldn’t blame the man but, after Griff cleared his throat, he spoke with obvious sincerity.

“It’s good to have you back.”

Sandor paused with the knife blade hovering over a celery stalk. In the oven, a roast braised and sizzled. His feet were comfortable in his favorite pair of boots. The dying sun was warm against his skin and somewhere out there Sansa was on her way to him. She’d called two hours ago, just before she left.

“It’s good to be back,” he finally replied with a smile gently lining his lips. For the first time in so long, all felt right with the world. “This normalcy thing is surreal,” Sandor added with an exhaled laugh and shook his head, but resumed his activity, now halving strawberries. In one of her letters, Sansa had mentioned they were her favorite. 

“The mundane will find its way soon enough,” Griff cautioned with a hearty chuckle. He paced to Sandor, plucked a strawberry from the cutting board, and popped it into his mouth. “You got your house in order, back to work at Bronn’s, a good woman who adores you by the sound of it. I’d say normalcy’s a good look on you.”

Sandor’s eyes shifted to Griff, who chewed slowly with a look of pride beaming in his pale eyes. For a moment, he reminded Sandor of his father, though he never could remember if his father ever regarded him this way. Maybe.

Griff leaned against the counter next to Sandor and lowered his voice as if the walls themselves were listening. “How’re you getting along otherwise? Sleeping okay?”

The question came with enough wayward trepidation and obvious interest that Sandor knew precisely what Griff was after. Sleep wasn’t the problem. It was the twilight before waking. Sometimes he’d swear he was back in his cell with Beric hovering near him and sending his senses into high alert.

A few times he even swore he heard the pounding on the cell bars, or some poor soul being dragged off to the infirmary. He’d wake with cold sweat dampening his brow, gulping for a breath that seemed to elude him, and the sheets tangled around his legs. Funny how those visions replaced his nightmares of war. Sandor didn’t rightly know which was worse.

“Yeah, I sleep fine.” The truth was too much to get into now and bound to just rile him up, so Sandor settled for an approximation of honesty. His eyes drifted to the clock. “I’ll sleep better once Sansa’s here. I don’t like being away from her for too long. Makes me antsy.”

Antsy was one hell of an understatement, enough that, if Griff knew any better, he might rightfully peg it as just another half-truth. Sandor had veritably climbed the walls the two nights he’d gone without her. He had torn himself away from her only after Sansa swore she’d stay with her friend and only because he needed to see about work. Those nights apart, Sandor slept worse than he did in prison and woke early in the morning, waiting for the sun to rise enough to call her.

“Some might call that falling in love, son,” Griff noted and smirked in a way Sandor hadn’t quite seen before. “How long will she be staying with you?”

Too much to wrap his mind around now, Sandor ignored the first bit and shrugged at the question. He and Sansa hadn’t really discussed it. The unspoken agreement they landed on—they’d take turns seeing each other on their days off and limit their time apart.

“As long as she can. She’s taking some time off work on account of what’s been going on. I don’t want her in Devil Creek alone.”

Sandor halted his ministrations again but dropped the knife to the cutting board as he turned to Griff.

“I haven’t asked, and I don’t pry into your work, but if you know something about these disappearances and murders, I wouldn’t mind hearing about it; as much as you can tell me.”

A shadow seemed to fall over Griff with a deep crevice carved between his brows. He pushed from the counter and stood up straight, but matched Sandor’s eyes.

“If I had something to share, I would,” he murmured, and Sandor believed him. Griff wasn’t forthcoming with details about work and most times Sandor didn’t care to hear about it, but the man didn’t mince words and, when asked for the truth, he would either give it or explain why he couldn’t. He didn’t bother with spinning a lie.

“There’s some talk about the FBI getting involved,” Griff continued with frustration that put an edge on his words. “You know when they come around, I won’t be hearing shit. They’ll set up a task force and strong-arm local law enforcement out of it. I’ll let you know if I hear anything, though. For now, I’m setting up more patrols in Cactus and I’ve had a couple conversations with the sheriff in Devil Creek about those calls Sansa’s been getting. They’re gonna look into it.”

Sandor nodded like he understood, or perhaps like he agreed. He didn’t on either front. How a maniac ran roughshod all over Texas without befalling vigilante justice and mysteriously “disappearing” was beyond Sandor.

Griff’s hands settled on his hips and he stared at Sandor with a knowing grin and the warmth returning to his features.

“Will I get to meet her?” he asked with insistence that suggested it was an expectation disguised as a question. 

Sandor tossed the cut-up strawberries into the nicest bowl he owned. “If you behave.” His lips lifted in a mischievous smirk when he glanced at Griff. “She and I will be busy. Maybe when we come up for air.”

Rough laughter poured from Griff and dispersed the tension that’d gathered in the room. “You trying to make up for lost time?”

“Just about,” Sandor chuckled, though it wasn’t just five years he was making up for. In so many ways, it felt like a lifetime of lost opportunities with her. Sansa insisted timing was everything. He supposed she was right.

Griff sighed and, on the way to the door, clapped Sandor on the shoulder. “Until then, you enjoy yourself and give my regards to Miss Sansa.”

“Thanks again, old man,” Sandor hollered after him and flashed a wicked smile. “I’ll tell her you brought the flowers and ask that she not hold it against you.”

Griff shook his head with a quiet laugh. “You’re a jackass.” With his middle finger, he tipped his hat before disappearing out the door.

The next two hours were a slow crawl. Sandor quickly expended all the minor tasks that might’ve occupied his mind. He tussled with an unfamiliar foe of nervous anticipation that sent his eyes drifting to the clock only to find mere minutes had passed. On it went on the waiting end where he’d never quite been before.

_There’s a first time for everything,_ Sansa once said to him, and it seemed apt that he experience everything as a first time with her. Almost everything…

When six-thirty rolled around, he paced the living room floor that creaked beneath the deliberate rhythm of restless steps. A few minutes later, an engine rumbled in the driveway and sent his heart pounding with wild exertion as he eyed the door with an even wilder thought that perhaps it was only a solicitor. The graceful clack of heels coming up the walkway were familiar, though. He froze when the storm door opened and the delicate knock said it was her. Of course, it was her.

With his heart in his throat, Sandor wiped his palms on the front of his black jeans and released a breath meant to soothe. He gripped the door handle and meant to open it in a slow sweep to feign composure, but his limbs did him no favors with ungainly movements. The door flung open and Sansa stood beaming brightly on the other side, a vision in a white cotton dress back lit by sinking sunlight.

Sandor couldn’t help the smile that erupted across his lips as he stood aside and let her in. As she crossed the threshold, he shed the vexation that’d hounded him in their time apart.

“You made it,” was all Sandor could manage as he took her bags and placed them on the couch for now.

“I did,” Sansa replied, faintly breathless and her cheeks flushed a dusky pink. She eased into the room in tentative steps as her eyes roamed the space.

Sandor sat on the arm of a wingback chair next to the door. He gathered up Sansa by her hands and she stood between his legs. Her hands rested on his shoulders and she looked at him as if she hadn’t seen him in years. Her gaze flicked between his lips and eyes, and her mouth held a wistful smile. Sandor wrapped his arms tight around the small of her back and drew her near.

Sansa’s hands slipped from his shoulders to cradle the sides of his face. The kiss she gave was delicate and warm; her pillowy lips sweeping against his in tender affection that he deepened when she leaned into him. It seemed sweet to him—that he’d thoroughly consumed her in every way, and yet she still quivered slightly in his embrace and kissed him with shy intimacy, as if it were the first time.

He caressed the tip of her nose with his own. “You’re trembling,” he whispered against her mouth. 

“I get nervous,” she admitted and something in the confession released a fair bit of tension in her body. “Good nervous,” she quickly added as if he’d ever doubt. “Butterflies.”

“Butterflies,” he repeated on a murmur. Sandor didn’t get butterflies but knew how she felt. He pulled back enough to drink in the sight of her; a beautiful creature, so full of radiant warmth and light, and yet _he_ was the one who made _her_ nervous.

“I missed you,” Sandor divulged, his own confession delivered on a pleasured sigh. He hadn’t planned on saying it but couldn’t remember why.

As if someone turned on a light, Sansa’s eyes danced with delight and she tossed her arms around him, holding on as if her whole world depended on it.

“I missed you too,” she whispered and buried her face against the side of his neck.

They held onto one another. Sandor’s palms smoothed up and down her back and he drew a deep inhale, breathing her in and relishing her body warm against his. Yet another first, the tranquil quiet—lush with pure peace and serenity—washed over him. With his eyes squeezed shut, he kissed her cheek and thought he might reveal more whispered confessions to her but let that instinct pass.

Sandor stood from the chair and noticed now the effort she’d clearly taken in her appearance—pretty make-up, but not overdone; long hair in waves; and a strapless dress that displayed the length of her legs and swell of her breasts and would look just as nice on the bedroom floor later.

“You look beautiful,” he said and took Sansa’s hand. She bit her bottom lip and eyed him too. It wasn’t an accident that he wore tight jeans and a shirt that showcased just how much he’d filled out with muscle behind bars.

“Thank you.” Sansa licked her bottom lip. Her eyes quickly swept from his chest to between his legs and back again. “You look very nice yourself. I love this on you.”

“I can see that,” he chuckled, and the blush seeped down Sansa’s cheeks to her chest. “I’ll give you a tour. It won’t take long.”

With his free hand, Sandor pointed to the living room where candles lined the fireplace mantle in the corner, and he’d taken care to ensure it was immaculate by the time she arrived.

“Living room needs no introduction.” He led her by the hand towards the hallway. “Kitchen,” he announced and marveled at how he’d kept it clean despite all the effort he’d gone to for dinner. “I tell you what—I’ve spent more time in there today than I have since I’ve owned this place.”

With an effervescent laugh bubbling from her lips, Sansa squeezed his hand and, though Sandor wasn’t prone to butterflies, she sure had a way of sending him in a tizzy with just a touch or a look, a laugh or a smile. Down the hall, she followed close behind and settled next to his side as Sandor pointed out each room.

“Bedroom. Bedroom. Master bedroom.” He smirked at her and allowed his shameless gaze to roam over her body. “We’ll be spending a lot of time in there. Bathroom,” Sandor pointed out on the way back down the hall. “I’d like to see you naked in there at some point.” 

He tossed another lascivious grin over his shoulder, one that she returned, and led the way back into the kitchen. He let go of her and settled against the counter with his hands in his pockets.

“That’s it,” he shrugged. The house wasn’t much, but it was his and there was great pride to be had in that and Sansa seemed to understand. 

“I love it here.” The smile she gave and the adoring way she tilted her head to the side said it was no bullshit or a compliment courtesy of manners and not much else. With another swell of pride, Sandor admired her standing with her hands gently placed on the back of a kitchen chair.

“Well, I love having you here,” he murmured, no bullshit on his end either.

Sansa’s gaze drifted across the table and he thought she might comment on the tablecloth but instead her lips lifted with a soft smile. “Flowers?”

“Yeah, they’re from my friend Clyde Griffin, who I told you about in one of my letters,” Sandor said. “He thought you might like them.”

Her smile faded as Sandor was about to divulge how he’d busted Griff’s balls for the bouquet. The collective effort seemed to sink in, and she stared at him with so much raw emotion behind her eyes that Sandor’s words died on his lips.

“That’s very sweet,” she gushed with heartfelt enchantment. “All of this is so sweet.”

“It’s what you deserve,” Sandor replied and traversed the kitchen to seal his declaration with a kiss.

Much like she’d done with him their first morning together, Sandor bid Sansa to sit at the table and offered her a glass of sweet wine he’d picked up at the store and hoped like hell she’d like.

From her perch, Sansa fidgeted in her seat as he tended to the rest of their meal, and she intervened twice to ask if he needed help. He let her set the table, but only so he could watch the way she bent over in an exaggerated reach to place the silverware next to the plates.

He caught on quick enough when she cast a coquettish and faintly deviant glance over her shoulder to see if he’d noticed. Of course, he had. Once that task was done and she had nothing left to tend to, he repaid the favor with deliberate moves all his own—bent over pulling the roast from the oven or the way he flexed when setting the food to the table. Ever the observant woman, Sansa noticed too, and fiendishly bit her bottom lip as she watched him.

Once he finished, Sandor topped off Sansa’s wine and refreshed his bourbon before settling at the table in the chair adjacent to her. He paused and scanned the table setting before realizing what was missing. Amused, Sansa giggled as he pulled matches from a drawer and lit the candles at the table. They were mismatched in height and in color too, but the only ones that fit in the silver candlesticks he’d found.

“There,” Sandor said with a nod and resumed his spot.

Sansa reached for him and her palm smoothed across the Christmas tablecloth. She was too polite to comment on it, or maybe she hadn’t noticed. She’d been watching him all night with wonderment that he still couldn’t believe a treasure like her was paying him.

“Thank you for all of this.” If she hadn’t flashed such a warm smile, Sandor might’ve thought she was on the verge of tears for the way her eyes glistened.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he laughed and slipped his hand into hers. “It could be terrible.” He eyed the roast sitting on a bed of vegetables. It smelled good enough, and that surely counted for something.

“It won’t be terrible,” Sansa assured with a subtle squeeze of his hand.

He matched her eyes, and, in that quiet moment of bliss, he remembered himself and what his life had been like not so long ago. 

“I don’t say dinner prayers, but I will say this,” he began and lifted her hand to his lips where he placed a soft kiss. “I’m thankful for you, little bird.”

“I’m thankful for you too.”

Now he’d really done it. Her eyes sparkled with tears that would’ve fallen down her cheeks had she not delicately dabbed at them with her napkin. Sandor lifted his glass to her, and she did the same and so commenced their dinner together with easy conversation and laughter that poured from her, and it was as sweet as a song as far as he was concerned.

“You’re a good cook,” Sansa commented halfway through dinner, though earlier she’d already complimented the meal he’d prepared. “You undersold yourself.”

Sandor lifted one brow at her and pushed his empty plate away in favor of his bourbon.

“I did that on purpose. I’m not like you in the kitchen, but I can manage the simple things.” He sipped his drink and swirled the glass against the table. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t be disappointed we weren’t out at a restaurant. If there were a place worthy of you around here, I would’ve taken you.”

Sansa dropped her silverware to her plate and wiped her mouth with the napkin as she gave a firm shake of the head. For a moment, she contemplated the kitchen, just a tad bigger than her own but not extravagant by any means.

“No, this is perfect. I like simple,” she said and stared in earnest at him.

Sandor dropped his eyes, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t believe her, but some part of him wanted to be sure.

“Do you?” he implored but kept his eyes on the ice cube melting in his glass.

“Yes,” Sandor heard her say, and he lifted his gaze. She meant it. “I don’t think I appreciated it enough before. It really is better.”

Sansa’s admission carried weight. He heard it and now saw it clear enough as she mindlessly pushed the remaining peas around her plate with the fork tines.

“Kansas City brought that change in perspective?”

Posed as a question, it was really just an observation. She spoke of that era with dismal heartache, the kind that etches itself in a person and, even after they’re whole again, the marks remain, encased in new growth.

Sansa set her fork down again and stared at the flickering candlelight but gave a weak nod and hesitated before speaking again.

“I used to go to these parties—everyone dressed to the nines; ridiculous amounts of food and alcohol; just crazy. People always asked what you did, but what they really meant was how you came into money.”

She glanced at Sandor, who listened intently. He knew parts of this story, but now recognized the glimpse she’d given him in her letters and just how much of herself she’d revealed in them.

“I didn’t know that, so I used to answer that I wanted to be a singer and songwriter. Eventually, it became apparent to me that, to those people, I wasn’t anything on my own, so they kept me out. I’d watch from the sidelines, waiting to be let in. From the outside, I saw the cracks. When it all came apart, the people I’d left behind in Devil Creek welcomed me back with no questions asked and no expectations that I had to be something. It was simpler, and it was better.”

When she finished, a sullen smile spread across her lips but quickly dissolved and her brows folded together. The pain of this wound ran deep in her. Sansa cleared her throat as if looking for a way out of the sadness and back to the light; as if her misfortune might impose or take up too much real estate in their togetherness, as if that’s the way these things worked.

There was a time, though, when things had worked that way for Sansa, Sandor knew. She never said as much but, in her last relationship, she’d apparently been given minuscule space in which to exist and had been told not to test the boundaries—to not make a fuss, not want for too much, to be grateful for what precious little kindness others had given her.

Sandor saw how her hand trembled when she brought her wineglass to her lips. He scooted his chair around the corner of the table and leaned forward to grab the base of her seat. He turned her chair towards him until they were face-to-face.

Confusion clouded her pretty features—bright blues that sometimes held so much sadness, full lips, soft skin. Sandor cradled her face in both hands and tried to wrap his head around who the fuck these people were and how the hell they hadn’t clambered to spend all the time they could with her.

“You are something on your own,” he whispered. “You’re everything, just how you are, right now, in this moment. Everything.” His voice fell to a hush and his eyes drifted to the floor. “And you mean everything to me.”

He kissed her before she could answer or protest or whatever it was she meant to do. It didn’t matter. He’d make her believe. When he pulled away, she was smiling again and lifted a hand to settle her palm against his neck, looking at him as though she were the lucky one.

“You’re a good man,” Sansa said, and her voice wavered. 

“I’ll be good to you,” he vowed, and if there were one thing he planned on getting right, it would be this. “Everyone else can fuck off.”

Sansa expelled a breathy laugh and nodded. With a gentle touch, she brushed her fingers through his hair. “I’ll be good to you too.”

“I’ve never doubted that you would,” he murmured and kissed her forehead and disbelief gathered at the edges like a dream.

It’d been ebbing and flowing since he left the terror of his old life behind. Moments like this had a way of eluding him or being revealed as subterfuge, but his hesitant joy blossomed with Sansa around. The possibilities stretched as wide and endless as the horizon, and he knew his freedom would mean far less without her.

When Sandor scooted his chair back to the head of the table, it seemed as good a time as any to consider their dinner finished. Sansa helped clear the table and insisted with no recourse for refusal that she would assist with the dishes too.

With the kitchen sink filled with soapy water, Sansa evaluated her white dress. “Do you have an apron I could borrow?”

Sandor grinned and headed for the hall. “Yeah, follow me. It’s frilly. You’ll love it.”

“No, it’s not!” Sansa giggled and took his hand.

Apparently, hand-in-hand was how they traveled everywhere now. He’d been doing it by some instinct that’d never afflicted him before and, with glittering smiles and eyes gone dreamy, she was in raptures over such a simple gesture of affection.

Sandor glanced at her with a serious expression willed onto his features as he pushed into the bedroom.

“Wait, is it?” Sansa asked, solemn and confused that she’d misjudged the kind of man he was.

“Fuck no.” Sandor broke with laughter and tossed the closet door open. “I don’t own an apron. Let’s see what we can find.”

Sandor pulled out a white t-shirt that’d function well-enough as an apron and could probably double as a short dress. The selection was intentional, and Sansa seemed to notice when he held it up for her approval. She bit her bottom lip and nodded, and he would’ve given her privacy to change, but she turned around for him to unzip her dress and gathered her hair over one shoulder.

“Can you offer a hand?” she asked and flashed a coy smile.

Sandor settled behind her and dipped his head to press his lips to her bare shoulder. He took his time unzipping her dress and let it fall to the floor. When it pooled at her feet, Sansa turned around and rolled to her toes to wrap her arms around his neck.

“Thank you,” she whispered against his mouth as a prelude to a kiss already well past sweet and sentimental and now sodden with lust.

“Can I offer anything else?” Sandor grabbed her hips and held her securely against him, enough that his hard manhood pressed against her bare belly.

“I’d like to save that for later,” she cooed, her voice sensual and lush, but it didn’t stop her from palming the front of his pants in a teasing touch.

“You better keep your hands to yourself then or I’m apt to grow impatient.” Sandor cupped her ass and gave a firm squeeze before tearing himself away from her with more difficulty than he expected.

After Sansa had slipped into his white t-shirt, she joined him in the kitchen again. In front of the sink, she washed dishes and Sandor decided he wasn’t quite done teasing her, so he settled behind her with his chest against her back and the bulge in his pants firm against her ass.

As she finished scrubbing the dishes, Sansa handed them off to him and, with his arms reached around in front of her, he dried them the best he could while planting kisses against her cheek, neck, lips, anywhere he could manage. The dishes likely suffered because of it, and he didn’t have it in him to give a shit.

With the kitchen cleaned, Sandor fetched the strawberries from the fridge. When he revealed them to her, Sansa gave a luminous smile and clapped her hands with pure, innocent glee. They opted for dessert outside on the back patio as clear night rose with a smattering of stars up above.

Candlelight danced between them and its hazy globe of light cast Sansa in a suffuse glow, warm against her delicate features. With her eyes to the sky, Sandor marveled at her once more as she licked the strawberry juice on her luscious lips and seemed to find such honest peace in gazing at the stars.

Sometimes Sandor speculated that the city could offer the anonymity he craved; a place to slip in and out of focus and live his life in humble obscurity that small towns just couldn’t offer. His past would always define him here no matter how he made amends. But moments like this appealed with wild wonder—inky nights where the stars shone brighter than he’d ever seen; vacant spaces that felt like a deep breath; the raw embodiment of true freedom.

He eased back in the patio chair and sipped his bourbon. The liquid was smooth as silk on his tongue and the spice just right. He stared at the glass in his hand and, in this moment, found perfection in things other men took for granted. Perhaps that was one blessing he could gather from his time locked away. A gentle weight fell over him as Sansa watched him now with the same fond observation as he often regarded her.

With her elbow propped against the table, she rested her chin in her hand and smiled softly at him.

“What is it?” He masked the question with a husky laugh to hide his ineptitude at being looked at this way. He still wasn’t certain of how to gracefully accept the loving gazes and affectionate touches she gave him.

“This is romantic,” Sansa remarked and studied her wine glass that she swirled in circles against the patio table. 

“Is it?”

Sandor supposed it was—candlelight, stargazing, a nightcap—but couldn’t stop his mind from fussing over all she deserved and all the ways he might fall short of giving it to her. In the strange artifact of the connection they shared, Sansa seemed to trace his thoughts. She reached for him and tucked her hand in his.

“Yes, this is all I want,” she assured and swiveled towards him in her seat. “To be right here with you.”

Sandor nodded slow, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. With their chairs side by side, Sansa crossed her legs and draped one arm over his lap. While she gazed up at the sky, he did some gazing of his own, just as riveting and awe-inspiring. His t-shirt barely covered her ass and left her long legs on full display and, when she shifted in her seat, he’d even catch sight of her lacy white underwear.

She’d taken her bra off too, and the night didn’t hold any kind of chill, but her nipples were still hard and poking through the shirt’s cotton weave. His fingers traced the outside of her thigh and he licked his bottom lip. Here she was submerged in romance and all he could think about was slipping his hand between her legs, lifting off the t-shirt, and having her ride him for all the stars to see.

“You’re not looking at the sky,” she giggled and only momentarily glanced at him with a devilish look behind her eyes that intimated she wasn’t issuing a complaint, only a studious observation. 

“I got distracted.” Sandor ran his palm down her leg and pulled his hand away before he got himself in trouble for spoiling the moment with his insatiable desire. “You know all the stars?”

He tipped his head to the celestial expanse above and paid deliberate attention to it, noticing how alarmingly gorgeous it really was. He tried to formulate some compliment—that her beauty could rival the heavens—but decided he’d only sound like a lovelorn jackass, so he kept it to himself.

Sansa drew a deep breath that she exhaled on a hum.

“Some of them.” She tossed her hair behind her shoulder and Sandor battled the instinct to touch her again, only because his will was wearing down and sooner rather than later he’d haul her off to the bedroom. Sansa pointed to the sky and traced with her finger a constellation. “That’s Orion’s belt. Big Dipper is there. Little Dipper.” She paused, bit her bottom lip, and shifted her eyes to him. “Um…that’s Medium Dipper.”

He followed her finger but couldn’t make out which stars she was pointing to.

“Medium Dipper,” he repeated and matched her gaze that she suddenly couldn’t seem to keep. 

“Yes.” She held her ground with a firm nod. The harder she bit her bottom lip, the harder Sandor gripped his bourbon glass, as if scrambling to keep hold of his composure. Sansa had a way of making this part difficult on him.

He set his glass down and crossed his arms tight over his chest with his narrowed eyes trained on her. “I’ve never heard of that one.”

Sansa battled an emergent smile and willed her beautiful face towards placid indifference but failed miserably as mischief ravaged her features.

“It’s very important in astronomy. Just recently discovered. It even made the evening news.”

“Really?” he pressed and surveyed her with obvious incredulity.

“Yes.” Sansa held fast to the ruse and lifted her wineglass to her lips but seemed to monitor his reaction with a stolen glance.

“Are you sure?”

His rumbling question, full of suspicion, catalyzed her merriment and she broke with bright laughter and a beaming smile. Now, he couldn’t take his eyes off of her—the intoxicating combination of the way she laughed and how she looked in the candlelight, the way she seamlessly fit here, in his home and in his life; as if she was always meant to have a place in both.

“What did I say about telling lies?” Sandor chuckled and leaned towards her. His lips swept against hers in a kiss that tasted like strawberries and peach wine. “Come here,” he grumbled and she came willingly into his lap.

With her back against his chest, she draped her legs over his thighs. Sandor wrapped his arms around her middle as they both gazed up at the sky and soaked in each other’s warmth. She burrowed against him and Sandor rested his cheek against her head. Though she still stared at the stars, he closed his eyes and delighted in the way her chest rose and fell with each serene breath she took.

“Some people believe that there are infinite universes,” she told him, soft though not quite a whisper. Her hand slipped into his. “Every decision we make sends us off into another reality, a parallel existence. My brother Bran is into learning about all of that.”

“That’s wild.” Sandor shifted enough to look at her and, with her head against his shoulder, Sansa craned her neck to stare back. “So, if you decided not to write to me, you’d be off in some other universe, with some other lucky man, fabricating stories about the same stars?”

Sansa reached up to cup his cheek. “No,” she corrected with a doting smile. “I said some people believe in that. I didn’t say me.” She pulled her hand from his face and settled in his arms again but traced her fingertips over the top of his knuckles. “I believe that some things are always meant to be, no matter the existence or universe.”

She lifted her hand and bid him to do the same. Her palm pressed flat against his and they both admired the difference—his rough skin against hers that was smooth; her slender fingers against his long, thick ones. She lifted her eyes to him, and the meaning passed effortless and unspoken between them. Not so long ago, they’d done this same thing, but with glass between them and the crushing belief that that might be as close as they ever came to one another.

When Sansa spoke now, she captured with unearthly eloquence all that he couldn’t.

“In every universe, all our decisions would’ve brought us together, eventually. Maybe just different timing. I don’t think there’s an existence where we don’t belong together.”

Sandor nodded. Whether he believed in it or not, he believed in her and this moment together and the extraordinary chain of events that led them to one another. It was enough for him. He kissed her temple and let his lips linger there as he spoke.

“So somewhere, in some other universe, there’s a ‘you’ and a ‘me’ and maybe they’re doing what we’re doing now.”

Her fingers slipped into his. “Yes, or maybe their story hasn’t been written yet and they’re still finding each other.” 

A breeze picked up, and the candlelight fell differently across her face, though no less bewitching. The desire running through Sandor changed its course too and, if he had the right words for her, he’d expose his heart now. He didn’t have those words, so he dropped his eyes to their hands entwined.

“I like that,” he murmured and let go of her hand. His palms slipped beneath the t-shirt and smoothed up her stomach. He cupped her breasts and lightly pinched one nipple. “We better get busy then, so they don’t catch up to us.”

A smile bloomed on her mouth and she pressed a honeyed kiss to his lips, pure and sweet and she needed more from him; the words he couldn’t find but felt. He hoped she knew in other ways—how he touched her, the things he did, how he watched her. He didn’t know the way like she did. 

“Does it scare you or excite you?” Sandor asked and searched her eyes for the answer.

Sansa toiled over the question for a moment before asking, “The universe or us?”

He motioned to the sky that seemed to deepen in color and the stars shone brighter because of it.

Her features went winsome again, angelic and devastatingly beautiful. “Excites. Endless possibilities.”

Sandor wrapped his arms tighter around her and pressed his lips to the graceful length of her neck. Her pulse beat wild against his kiss. “And what about us?” he whispered.

“Both,” she replied honestly and turned to look at him. “And you?”

He faltered. This was all like breaking new ground and he found himself in unknown territory, wild with possibility, but the uncharted path would strike fear in any man, if nothing more than the potential to bungle it without the blueprints. When he couldn’t summon the answer in time, Sansa spoke again.

“Don’t be scared,” she soothed so tenderly that Sandor couldn’t help the smile that drifted across his mouth. “What if it were just us in the universe and everything else was made for you and me?”

He rested his head against hers and closed his eyes. “I like that. So we agree—everyone other than us can fuck off.”

Sansa laughed and her mirth drove away the fear in him. “Yes. It’s just us,” she agreed. 

It felt like she’d taken his hand and was leading the way with patient acceptance and compassion he’d never known. He realized then that she’d been down this path before and it’d treated her unkind, and the road hadn’t been easy for her either. And yet, here she was—guiding the way with faith in the fate that brought them together and trust that it wouldn’t tear them apart.

Sandor had his ways of communicating back what she so effortlessly found the words for. He kissed her cheek and moved to stand. Sansa climbed from his lap and he blew out the candle before taking her by the hand. He led her inside and turned out the lights as they went; first, through the kitchen, the living room, down the hall, and into the bedroom where he shut the door behind him and might as well have been shutting out the rest of the world.

As she’d said, it was just them.

They exchanged no words as they stood in the incandescence put off by the bedside lamp. Sandor sat at the edge of the bed and Sansa stood in front of him. He lifted the t-shirt over her head and deposited it on the floor. His own shirt ended up there as well. Sandor gazed up at her and reveled in the way she looked back at him. With his hands at her hips, he bid her to turn around and, when she did, his lips grazed her spine and the hair that cascaded down her back swept against his cheek.

The urgency fell away in favor of soft touches, the feel of their skin against skin as he laid her down on the bed and settled on top of her. In an unhurried embrace, he held her against him and relished everything he could—the rise and fall of her chest in time with his; each anticipatory breath rustling against his skin as she kissed his neck; the slight tremble of her fingers because she too recognized this was turning a page for them. He didn’t know about those others in the universe, but this story was theirs to write and they’d take the pen together.

Sandor eased up enough to prop himself on his elbow next to her. As she lovingly caressed his cheek with her palm, Sandor’s fingertips trailed between her breasts and down her stomach in a whisper of a touch that bid her eyes to flutter shut. When his fingers disappeared beneath the band of her pretty lace underwear, she drew a deep breath and her knees fell apart.

He swiped slow between her legs, gently parting her lower lips and trailing one finger through the pool of wetness there. Sandor watched her, enraptured by every pant from her lips and the way her body moved to the pace he’d set.

“I want you,” she whispered with breathy insistence and head sinking further into the pillow. “In every way.”

Sandor dipped one finger inside her and back out with dawdling ease. Hovering above her, he took one breast in his hand, pert and soft against his palm. He leaned forward and the tip of his tongue swirled around the hard pink nipple. Sansa buried her fingers in his hair and bucked against his touch, now the one losing her patience. A rasping laugh escaped him, and she opened her eyes, heavy-lidded with want. His lips pressed against hers, tongue sweeping over her bottom lip before delving into her mouth, warm and willing and filled with the urge to have him closer.

Just as she was about to tug him nearer and probably climb on top of him to set her own pace, Sandor sat up. Sansa bit her bottom lip and her palms smoothed up and down his bare chest and abdomen. Her cheeks flushed pink, but her eyes darkened with ardent need, the passion burning through her.

Sandor shucked out of his jeans and underwear and, standing at the edge of the bed, took himself in hand and stroked his length. Sansa pushed herself up on all fours and crawled to the edge of the bed. On her hands and knees, she gazed up at him with all her sultry sweetness, the combination that drove him wild. He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. The other hand guided the tip of his cock to her lips, swollen from kissing and pretty pink.

“This what you want?” he groaned and gazed down at her.

She flashed an enthralled smile and nodded.

“Go on then.” The teasing chuckle that escaped him was short lived as Sansa spared no bit of introduction. Her hand replaced his around his cock and those gorgeous lips circled the tip.

The pleasure that rippled through Sandor always took him by surprise, but now it blindsided. He gathered up her hair in his fist and his eyes went to the ceiling as she took him in her mouth. She sucked tentatively at first, and her tongue swirled around his length. Her hand stroked the rest of him that she couldn’t quite manage, and the concert of her movements was enough that his knees weakened.

A shuddering sigh escaped him, and Sandor looked down to find Sansa staring up at him, her cheeks hollowed and that heavenly mouth finding all the right rhythms that would bring this evening to an abrupt end if she kept going. Sandor’s breath seethed from clenched teeth. With tremendous difficulty, he pulled away and pushed Sansa to the bed.

Deer in the headlights, her blue eyes went wide as she scooted backwards, knowing damn well what was coming for her and smiling with anticipation. Sandor crawled after her and yanked her underwear down her thighs with no more ritualistic ease. In one movement, he tossed them over his shoulder, urged her knees apart, and where she looked convinced he might delve between her legs like a man starved, Sandor teased instead.

His lips grazed the shape of her body—the dip of her waist, the rise of her hips, down the outside of her thigh. Something between a whimper and a moan escaped her as she watched him. He smiled up at her and matched her eyes as the tip of his tongue trailed down one of her plush lips and then the other. And just when she might’ve protested for more, he sucked softly on her clit.

She had no protests now. She barely had words. She wasn’t the only one adept at this practice and the divine sounds pouring from her mouth became increasingly incoherent as he licked and sucked, teased and kissed between her legs, following each breath she took until he felt her thighs trembling against his cheeks.

Sansa released a sighing moan and gripped the bedsheets as her legs fell further apart. She writhed to meet his mouth in a way she hadn’t before; with carefree and surmounting abandon, coming undone underneath him. Her fingers combed through his hair and she tensed. With her loud cry, Sandor felt the flush against his lips. He gave a satisfied smile and one last lick that sent a tremor through her. _Mine._

Sansa sunk into the mattress, her limbs loose now and one arm tossed over her eyes, though her lips were parted as she panted. Sandor wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He might as well have been wiping away the smirk at having left her in gorgeous ruins after coming so hard.

When Sansa pulled her arm away, the hunger and determination in her eyes stilled his movements. Paired with her seductive smile, Sansa rose to her knees and crawled towards him. Sandor settled back against the pillow. He didn’t have a choice. With one hand to his chest, she pinned him down and straddled him before tossing her hair behind her shoulders.

Her lips met his with a fever he hadn’t known in her. She kissed him hard and deep, not caring one bit about the taste of herself on his lips. She moaned into his mouth and that fervor was infectious now. Sandor held her firm against his chest. His hand slipped to the back of her head, sinking in her hair and deepening the kiss. His other hand fumbled between them, encircling his cock and positioning it at her opening.

When he went to drive himself into her, Sansa lifted enough to let him know who was in charge. His frustrated grunt was met with a gentle hum from her. If he had any doubts, when she pulled away from the kiss, her hand at his chest urged him to lay back again and the tender deviousness had gathered behind her eyes. Sandor cupped her breasts, palming them gently, and he almost thought to plead with her as he drank in the sight of her supple lower lips, drenched and glistening and spread at the tip of his cock.

“This what you want?” she whispered on a shy breath, so at odds with how she smiled at him now.

Before he could answer, Sansa eased down his length, taking him in slowly. A slew of words Sandor couldn’t repeat even if he tried escaped him. They all came on one groaning exhale, incoherent and matching the indistinct way the light filtered through his eyes squeezed shut. His hands gripped her hips. They smoothed up her thighs when she rose and fell along his length, each pass taking him in deeper and with a quickened cadence. He watched, mesmerized and indisposed and in utter disbelief at the sensations rolling through him.

Back arched, she swiveled her hips in a fluid, grinding rhythm that allowed him to feel every inch of her. And if he believed in God, he might’ve seen that divinity in this moment—Sansa losing herself in the rhythm she set, riding him hard, legs falling further apart, her hands gripping the sides of her head, as she panted and moaned, and eventually collapsed against his chest.

The urgency didn’t abate, though. Sandor took over the pace with his hands at her hips and fervent kisses as his tongue swept against hers. Every noise they made was one. He felt her tighten around his cock, the sensation almost blinding. Another flush between her legs and he thrust deeper and harder. She squeezed her eyes shut and dropped her head to his shoulder and called out his name as she came. _Mine._

The thought alone drove him over the edge, and he held her limp body hard against him. His hips bucked against her, pressure surmounting, and Sansa lifted just in time for him to release with blinding ecstasy, the kind that felt like he might depart his own body.

She rolled off him with her thighs trembling, hair a mess, and her skin flushed. As his seed spilled over his chest, Sansa collapsed to the mattress next to him. In the aftermath, Sandor couldn’t say how long they laid next to one another. Hand-in-hand, they stared at the ceiling, catching their breath and coming down from the otherworldly heights they’d sent each other.

When Sansa slowly turned her head towards him, Sandor did the same and squeezed her hand. A small laugh escaped her, one that Sandor matched.

“That was…” she sighed and stopped because the world didn’t make words for moments like this and Sandor was apt to believe it was because a rare few ever had the pleasure of experiencing what they just had.

“Yeah,” he agreed and tossed his arm around her. “It was.” He kissed her forehead and couldn’t help the smile that erupted across his lips. With it came another chuckle that bid Sansa to gaze up at him.

He rolled over to the edge of the bed and grabbed his t-shirt from the floor to clean himself up. When he laid back down, Sansa settled next to his side, her head resting in the crook of his shoulder and still staring up at him in that adoring way.

“You’re incredible,” Sandor murmured against her mouth because he apparently wasn’t done trying to define the ineffable between them. He kissed her in dawdling wonderment at how she felt against him, the way she tasted sweet, the smoothness of her skin. 

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and Sandor eased on top of her once more. For a great long while, they cherished the intimacy of slow kisses and soft touches until the desire in him rose again and in her too. He reached between her legs and found her wet and willing and she whispered again that she wanted him, but the unrestrained affection in her eyes spoke in ways her lips couldn’t and he understood.

Sandor eased inside of her, and his palm cupped her cheek. The kiss he placed against her lips was simple but lost no devotion because of it. Sansa cradled the back of his head and her legs wrapped around his hips as he thrust tender and slow. When the kiss broke, he rested his forehead against hers and felt each of her pants against his lips.

He normally had words for these moments—narrating the feel of her body; the things he wanted from her; the promises of what was to come. Sandor remained silent, and not for the lack of words. There was so much he’d say to her right now if his heart would only let him, if only it knew how.

Sansa seemed to already know. She understood in the way he held onto her, the caress of his palms along the silhouette of her curves, and his hands cradling her face. She was already there, and he was merely racing to keep up with the erratic fear that she’d slip away. With his mouth covering over her own and their lips sweeping together, he captured every gasp and revered it with a kiss, deep and consuming. He savored the feel of her, and they reached their peak together, unrushed and unrelenting.

Sandor’s hands slipped into hers and he buried his face against the side of her neck, damp with sweat. Her body was flush and warm against him. The pleasure that came was different, but no less intense. When it came for both of them, the aftermath also held silent veneration, but they did so wrapped up in one another.

With Sandor on top of her, Sansa held onto him, her cheek pressed against his and arms encircled tight around his shoulders. Sandor’s arms slipped around her lower back, tucked between her and the mattress. He pressed his lips against her temple, cheek, the tip of her nose, and then her mouth.

Whereas the moment before had no words, this one had plenty. Humanity had been singing about it, writing about it, agonizing over it, and exalting its splendor since the dawn of time. For Sandor, it’d gone shapeless, a mirage on the distant horizon that wouldn’t truly exist if he ever reached it. Now it had a shape, a name, a look, a touch, a sound. He held Sansa tight against him and released a heavy sigh. _Mine. To love. To cherish. Mine._

“Did you really wish for me like you said in your letter?” he asked on a quiet breath and lifted himself enough to stare down at her. The lamp’s golden light danced against her skin still flush and glistening.

Sansa lifted a hand to the ruined side of his face. She matched his eyes and gave a faint nod. “On every star in the sky.”

Sandor cracked a smile and averted his eyes to his fingertip that traced her collarbone in a light touch. “Including Medium Dipper?”

“Yes,” she laughed bright like a bell beneath him, but quieted once more as she gazed up at him as if he were a dream brought to life. “And here you are.”

He closed his eyes and would remember to count his lucky stars, even the ones she invented just to wish upon for him.

“Here _you_ are,” he whispered. When he pulled her nearer, he felt her heart beating against his and her exhale against his skin. “It’s just us,” he said. “And I want you in every way too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact—this chapter did not exist in the outline for this story and wasn’t planned! I wrote it about a month and a half ago when found myself submerged in SanSan feelings! It’s another transitional chapter, but I did lay some groundwork here and there’s at least one or two details that eventually mean something, so the plot is thickening even as SanSan canoodle beneath the stars.
> 
> Now that we are halfway through this story, I want to take a moment and let you all know how very much the support you’ve shown me and my writing has meant. I’m so touched and blown away by all the love, the thoughtfulness, and sheer kindness. It truly brightens my day during these difficult times and I’m honored to be a part of this fandom and to have such wonderful and kind souls reading my work. Thank you endlessly and I am so excited to share the second half of this story with you and many more stories to come! 
> 
> Much love to you all and I’ll see you back here in two weeks for Ch. 13! This is the only break I scheduled for this story, so it’ll be every Tuesday until the end! Stay safe!


	13. Dreams

On the floor of Sandor’s living room, Sansa sprawled out on her stomach and flipped through a photo album. She eyed each passing page with distracted interest as the Fleetwood Mac record she’d brought lilted low from the speakers. Almost two weeks ago, Sandor had perched in her kitchen and Sansa had been well aware of how he’d studied her movements.

She supposed it was only fair she was given the same opportunity to admire him in his own kitchen now—his hair tumbling in long, black waves amongst massive shoulders; a black t-shirt stretching against his bulky arms and broad chest; his backside in those jeans.

Sansa had fed him well the days and nights he’d stayed with her and, while he hadn’t promised the same level of complexity in his meals, Sandor insisted on cooking for her too.

Tonight, he opted for a simple dinner of barbecued pork, herb potatoes, and broccoli, but claimed he was running out of recipes, and soon enough he’d have to haul out the instant potatoes. Sansa didn’t mind what he fixed for her. With her chin propped against the heel of her hand, the view of him left her satiated in some ways and hungrier in others.

For the past week, Sansa had stayed with Sandor after stringing together her days off, much to the chagrin of Jeyne and the other waitresses. Each passing day offered both an existence steeped in romance and intimacy, but also knowledge that Sansa would have to return to Devil Creek eventually. Reality crept into the world they’d created with one another, expedited when Sansa phoned Jeyne a few days ago to check in. She’d been reunited with horror as the girl sobbed into the line.

The body dumped on the side of the road was Mr. Mormont’s daughter. Sansa remembered the girl as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child who used to race up and down the aisles of Mormont’s hardware store and dip her hands into buckets of washers and bolts. Now sixteen, the girl had only just gotten her driver’s license, and it wasn’t like her to disappear. When she hadn’t come home, the sheriff and a few others went looking and must’ve found her not long before Sansa and Sandor came upon the scene by horrible happen-chance.

The murders now gripped the region and even earned a segment on the national evening news— _Terror in the Texas Plains_. Sansa and Sandor had watched part of it until Sansa’s stomach knotted and she asked him to turn it off. Since then, she’d tried not to dwell and sent the thoughts away, knowing she’d have to pick them up again when she returned to Devil Creek. For now, she thought it best to savor the time she had left with Sandor.

He leaned against the counter as he waited for the vegetables to finish roasting in the oven. With one long leg crossed over the other and an arm folded across his chest, Sandor lifted his beer to his lips and eyed Sansa as he sipped. He’d begrudgingly obliged in letting her look through his photo album when she squealed with delight at seeing his baby pictures.

They hadn’t disappointed. In them, jet black curls framed pudgy cheeks, but even as a child his eyes seemed to shelter secrets. Sansa gushed over the pictures but realized when he’d gone quiet that his childhood memories held some bitterness. The photographs stopped abruptly at age eight and only two harbored evidence of his scars. The first was his military photo. With a buzz cut, Sansa hardly recognized him. In the other, Sandor stood arm-in-arm with a brown-eyed brunette who flashed a pretty smile.

With her legs swinging leisurely behind her, Sansa tossed her hair over one shoulder and glanced at Sandor from beneath her lashes.

“Only trouble comes from a look like that,” he chuckled and pulled two dinner plates from the cabinet.

Sansa plucked the Polaroid from its sleeve and studied it. Sandor looked young, no older than twenty if she had to guess. She flipped it around and held it up for him to see.

“You’ve been in love before,” Sansa remarked, though she probably should’ve posed it as a question rather than a foregone conclusion.

It was a serendipitous discovery. Sansa had wanted to ask if he’d ever given his heart to another, but never quite knew where his walls went up. The boundaries seemed to shift unknowingly; the topography of the unspoken and unacknowledged spaces within him too steeped in complexity. Sansa didn’t know how to navigate it. 

Sandor averted his gaze and nodded. “That was a long time ago,” he muttered before taking another swig of his beer.

He said no more and busied himself setting the table, but the silverware clunked hard against the solid wood surface. Sansa didn’t push it and instead returned the Polaroid and all its mysteries to the photo album.

She’d add this to the growing list of topics to circle back to. With time, she’d pave a spiraling path that might afford her deeper knowledge of Sandor’s past. She knew bits and pieces; disjointed sections of his narrative that were never in order and some redacted altogether, too deep or sordid to revisit.

She knew the present, though—that he’d inherited this house, not unlike her own. It was simple and small, but enough for him. The decor was woefully outdated but somehow worked with the War-era simplicities that lacked extravagant flourishes. His rodeo winnings and a sizable inheritance offered him the luxury of not having to worry about much for now.

Sansa flipped another page of the album. A raven-haired woman stared up at her with piercing gray eyes and her hair done up in victory rolls. She smiled through ruby-red lips.

“This is your mother?” Sansa gasped and turned the photo album around for Sandor to see. “She’s so beautiful.”

Sandor cracked a smile that Sansa knew wasn’t a product of much joy and cleared his throat. He mumbled an affirmative and turned away to peer into the oven. Sansa read the signs. She closed the photo album and returned it to a shelf in the living room.

“I’m sorry,” she said and pushed herself from the floor. The green carpet was plush against her bare feet. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“It’s alright,” Sandor assured tepidly and pulled the vegetables from the oven. “Dinner’s ready.” 

He kissed the top of her head and handed Sansa a plate. She served herself first and settled at the table but waited for Sandor to join her. In the meantime, she studied the kitchen with its plain wood cabinets and old appliances. The fruit-patterned wallpaper had faded, and the linoleum floor yellowed at the edges. Sandor took his spot adjacent to Sansa, who lifted her glass of sweet tea to him.

“What are we saluting to tonight?” he asked with a rugged smile when his beer bottle clanked against Sansa’s glass.

She hadn’t known, but only meant to dispel the strained unease that gathered at the edges of the room and had rendered him reticent.

Sansa smiled. “To us.” 

“To us,” he quietly repeated, set his beer down, and dug into his food.

Sansa did the same, eating slow and savoring each bite. A man who knew his way around the kitchen was a rare find and she told him as much each night, though Sandor refused the praise she sought to heap on him.

“So, you said this house was your inheritance,” Sansa began between bites of potato. “But I thought you grew up in San Antonio.” 

“I did.” Sandor nodded and paused as his eyes swept over the kitchen. “This was my grandparent’s house. I was sent up here for summers or when my brother was raising too much hell. Sometimes my little sister would come too.”

Sansa nearly spat out her sweet tea and struggled to swallow it down. Her throat burned, and she lifted the napkin to her mouth to cover a cough. The casual detail rang odd and abrupt, something like dropping a boulder in calm waters. He’d never mentioned a sister. Dumbfounded, Sansa gaped at Sandor who placidly piled broccoli onto his fork.

“Sister? I didn’t know you have a sister. What’s her name? Where is she?”

All her excitement at meeting a member of Sandor’s family vanished as swiftly as it had formed. Sandor cast a somber look at her and drew a deep but measured breath as his back straightened.

“She’s no longer with us. She died when she was a little girl,” he informed too matter-of-fact for such a tragic story, and it wasn’t for lack of pain. Sansa saw it surface in his eyes before he buried it again. 

All the weight in the room landed squarely on her shoulders, the burden of guilt for having repeatedly asked too many questions. Once more, she didn’t know where his boundaries were and it all felt like bumbling around in the dark, feeling for walls and trying to avoid holes in the ground. She wished he’d just turn on the light.

A sister. Sansa hadn’t seen a single picture of a little girl in the photo album. It seemed to her that the Clegane family swept things under a rug piled high with secrets beneath. It wasn’t her business to peek, so Sansa let it go.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered and did what she did best—search for higher ground and detour to happier topics. 

She kept things light, merrily chattering about whatever came to mind until Sandor eased back in his seat and regained as much levity as a man like him was want to have. He even laughed a little at one of her jokes.

After they finished their meal, Sansa helped Sandor with the dishes. They made a mighty team—Sansa with her hands dunked in the soapy water and Sandor drying and returning the dishes to their proper place. She wiped down the kitchen table, cognizant of how Sandor gazed at her ass in the cut-off denim shorts she wore.

He took her hand and led Sansa into the living room lit with the romantic glow of a few lamps. He drew the tweed curtains shut and, by now, Fleetwood had sung their last song and Sandor replaced them with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

He turned around with mischief in his eyes and an impish smile peeling across his lips as he reached for Sansa and gathered her in his arms.

“Thank you for dinner,” she said sweetly and, with her chin against his chest, gazed up at him. “What do you wanna do now?”

“I have a surprise for you.” Sandor’s voice dropped to a deep rumble that Sansa could feel against her chest.

“What is it?” she cooed and bounced lightly on her toes.

With his hands cupping her cheeks, Sandor kissed her tenderly. “You wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Sansa sat crossed legged on the couch and watched Sandor disappear into his bedroom. A few moments later, he reappeared with a wicked grin and his hands behind his back. He loomed in front of her and matched her imploring gaze.

“Well, are you gonna show me?” Sansa pressed and sat up straight.

When he pulled his hands from behind his back, Sandor held out a lighter in one and a hand-rolled cigarette in the other. Sansa didn’t understand why he’d gift her this. She wasn’t a smoker, and neither was he. It didn’t dawn on her until Sandor’s head tilted to the side with an incredulous stare.

“Oh God!” Hands to her face, she buried her laughter in her palms and eased back on the couch. Sandor plopped down next to her, his bicep pressed against her shoulder.

“You can’t tell me you’ve never gotten high,” he chuckled, and it was more of a playful accusation than a question. 

Sansa held up one finger as heat hit her cheeks. “Once.”

She’d only done it to impress Joffrey after they moved to Kansas City. It’d been a compromise because she had refused to snort cocaine like all the other privileged socialites and spoiled offspring of oil money. Marijuana seemed far more harmless and a clever means to placate his temper.

“Once,” Sandor repeated with another raspy laugh. He lifted the joint to his lips and lit it. Wisps of smoke appeared, and Sandor held his breath as he passed it off to Sansa.

They only got through half of it. With each pass back and forth, Sansa’s limbs loosened, formless and weightless as if made of warmed putty. She melted into the couch and even slid onto the floor where she made snow angels in the thick pile of the silky green carpet.

Floating and drifting and staring at the popcorn ceiling, Sansa giggled at every sarcastic comment Sandor made and their banter glided into the carefree oblivion of nonsense, technicolor in its absurdity.

Sandor took a few more puffs, cursed his intolerance, and tapped out the cherry ember of the joint. As Sansa hummed along to the record, Sandor crawled across the floor to her but collapsed halfway and rolled to his back.

“Get over here, little bird,” he demanded with his words all running together and ending on laughter. His arm shot above his head and glided across the carpet as he reached for her.

Sansa crawled over and straddled him and, in her unbridled exuberance mismatched to clumsy limbs, she bounced on Sandor who grasped her hands and let out a solid _oof._

“Not that, darlin’,” he chided in jest and held her against his chest as much to still her movements as to have her near. His hands smoothed up and down her back in dawdling motion.

“You’re so wonderful,” she sighed against the fabric of his shirt and her fingers twirled in the strands of his hair. “God! And you’re sexy too.” She breathed in the scent of his cologne, savored his warmth, and marveled at the strength of his body beneath her.

Sandor laughed hard, and Sansa jostled with his mirth. “You’re one to talk. Sometimes I can’t believe you’re real!”

His voice rumbled through the room with loud insistence as if he were announcing it to the world, though it was just them two.

“I am real!” Sansa protested with vigor that might suggest it was up for debate.

Sandor released another laugh, quieter this time and filled up with fondness. “I know you are, sweetheart. You’re real and you’re mine.”

Overcome with a torrent of sentiment, Sansa nuzzled her cheek against him. “I’m real and I’m yours,” she whispered with her eyes squeezed shut.

She propped herself up again and, when Sandor bent his legs at the knees, Sansa settled back against them. Her fingers interlaced with his and she swayed back and forth in a buoyant tempo.

“What do you like best about me?” she asked on a sing-song voice.

A broad, handsome smile swept across Sandor’s lips and left Sansa besieged with butterflies. “What do you mean? You know what I like, girl.”

He bucked his hips and, though his smile softened, his eyes darkened with drunk lust.

“That doesn’t count.” Sansa unfurled her fingers and pressed her palms to his. 

“Says who?” he countered as Sansa clapped her hands against his.

She gazed at the ceiling and its pattern swirled together. “That’s like the free space in bingo. It’s just a given.”

“It ain’t a given for everybody, I tell you what!”

Another declaration, Sandor’s voice rose with conviction that didn’t intend humor but left Sansa giggling like mad until tears streamed down her cheeks. 

“Fine,” he sighed, and his hands slipped to Sansa’s hips. “If we’re ignoring all the free spaces—and there are a lot with you—then my answer is that we get along. I don’t get along with many people, but I do with you. You’re my best friend, Sansa.”

She listened to every word he said, wrapping the formless bits of her being around each one. A radiant burst of joy filled her up, and she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry or declare that she loved him already and had been a fool to kid herself otherwise.

“I like that one. You’re my best friend too,” was all her graceless mouth could manage, though tears still blurred her vision. “Aren’t you going to ask what I like about you?”

Sandor barked a sharp laugh that sent Sansa bouncing slightly on top of him. She felt him half hard between her legs and swiveled her hips with gentle ease.

“No, but I reckon you’re gonna tell me anyhow.” Sandor’s hands circled her waist now and, though she thought she was being coy, he guided her movements to grind against his manhood.

“You’re a good man,” she breathed. Her fingernails scratched against his shirt and she admired him, so large and strong and fierce beneath her. His hair fanned out under his head and his arms flexed with muscled definition. Sansa felt a flush between her legs.

“You sure about that?” Sandor groaned on a long exhale and clenched his jaw as Sansa added pressure to each slow grind.

“Yes. I see you for who you are.” Sansa’s head fell back slightly, but she kept Sandor’s eyes as his chest rose and fell with quickened breaths. He palmed her breasts through the thin fabric of her halter top. Sansa kept the cadence he’d set and swiveled against the hard bulge in his pants. “All these things you’ve lived through. You’re not a pretender. And you’re a good man.”

Sandor closed his eyes and lifted his hips enough to meet each of Sansa’s loose rolls.

“I think you’re making a lot of assumptions,” he grunted and bit his bottom lip. “Besides, you’re high as a kite. You don’t see shit.”

Sansa swore the inebriated haze manifested on a smoke screen in the living room and Sandor laughed in a way she’d never heard before. It rumbled hearty in his belly and exploded through his lips.

“But I’ll give you something you’ll see just fine.” He bucked hard enough to be sure Sansa felt his cock between her legs, as if it might’ve gone unnoticed. “It’s hard to miss. Get it? Hard.”

Sansa toppled off of him, incapacitated with a fit of giggles as she rolled to the floor. Her face ached and sides hurt as tears streamed down her cheeks. Sandor followed suit with more heavy laughter that filled the room with a different kind of warmth that he carried into the bedroom along with Sansa.

When he tossed her to the bed, the desire in his eyes was different too. So was the feel of his hands against her body as he undressed her with leisure and lust in equal measures; the way he kissed her deeply; the words he muttered in her ear, not the kind meant to make her blush. These were whispered affirmations that danced so close to the line of confessing love—he wanted her, he needed her, his world had been dark and cold without her in it, she was his light, and he didn’t want to be without her.

Where he often reserved secret parts of himself, Sandor revealed something in their lovemaking. With each slow thrust, the way he held her against his chest, fingers entwined with hers, mouth panting against her neck, the intimacy between them grew far beyond all it’d been and the roots of it sunk deep between them, alive and flourishing with the connection it forged. Nose-to-nose and heart-to-heart, they established new ground together, equal in the partnership they created.

Sansa reached her peak and Sandor seemed to treasure every panting breath as she clung to his shoulders and called out his name. In the quiet afterglow, he laid her down on the pillow with the sheet pulled back. The pale light of the full moon streamed through the window, and Sandor silently traced her curves with his fingertips in a midnight ritual. He brushed through her hair and his touch came lush with fresh meaning.

When he laid down, they faced one another in the dark. Sandor grasped her hand in the small space between them and Sansa thought to speak, to whisper her confession to him. It occurred to her, though, that the moon-drenched moment spoke in a language all its own; a recognition as old as time that took no form but existed in the ineffable between them.

She smiled softly and Sandor collected her in his arms as he rolled to his back. With her head nestled against his shoulder, she felt his breaths deepen and slow. Long after Sandor had succumbed to sleep, Sansa listened to distant thunder rumbling across the parched earth in dire need of rain. Earlier, she’d felt the impending storm on air that’d grown thick and electric. Rain lashed the window now, and the rising wind whipped through the trees. The branches cast strange shadows that danced across the room and crept down the walls like gnarled hands.

She closed her eyes and focused on the sound of the rain against the roof, and the simple distraction lulled her into dreamless sleep. In the middle of the night, a crack of lightning flashed across the black behind Sansa’s eyes, but it wasn’t the accompanying boom of thunder that ripped her from sleep.

With the violent sound, Sandor snapped up from beneath the covers so savagely that it almost knocked Sansa out of bed. A blood-curdling scream ripped through the room, rivaling the thunder that shook the house. As his cry dampened to a whimper, Sandor’s limbs still flailed as he fought off an invisible foe and yelled for her to take cover.

In a sheer panic, Sansa tried to corral him and soothe whatever horror afflicted, but his arm shot up and barred her path. He heaved so hard and heavy that Sansa swore each breath must’ve come with a sharp pain for how he clawed at his bare chest. Even in the muted darkness, she saw the sweat beading his brow.

Stunned into silence, Sansa clutched the bedsheet to her breasts and tried to reach for Sandor, who seemed to gain his bearings as his eyes darted about the room. He kicked free the covers and tossed his legs over the side of the bed. When Sansa stroked his back with a tentative touch, just a mere brush of her fingertips, Sandor stiffened and grumbled something that she couldn’t understand. Without even a glance over his shoulder, he stood from the bed and stumbled out of the room.

Sansa collapsed against the pillow. In the bathroom, she heard water splash from the faucet and Sandor pad down the hall towards the kitchen. She stared up at the ceiling and listened to the storm howling outside. Lightning cracked the ink black sky and illuminated it as bright as day. Thunder rattled the windows and shook the walls with brutal tremors.

She didn’t know how long she waited for Sandor to return but, by the time she climbed out of bed, the space between lightning and thunder had grown and the rain eased from a torrential downpour to a steady patter. She pulled on her underwear and Sandor’s t-shirt and crept in tip-toed steps down the hall.

In the darkened living room, Sansa discerned Sandor’s hulking silhouette sitting at the edge of the couch. He flinched when the floorboard creaked beneath Sansa’s feet, but kept his head cradled in his hands and elbows propped on his knees. A burst of lightning lit up the room in a quick flash, enough that Sansa saw now the rapid rise and fall of Sandor’s back with each frantic breath he took.

Her heart bid her to dash to his side, to chase away whatever haunted him and soothe his silent screams that, while quieted now, she knew still raged inside of him. An inner voice, one Sansa didn’t quite recognize, warned her to be the calm he so desperately needed right now. She approached Sandor in near-gliding steps, moving smooth and even across the carpet.

She was so close, just a few feet away, when Sandor’s arm raised, and he held out his hand to halt her advance. He lifted his head from his palms just as another burst of lightning exploded through the room and illuminated his face. The look he gave her was one Sansa had never seen from him before—a solemn warning and tormented with competing desires that ached for her to be near but weighed some hidden cost.

Sansa stopped and, even in the darkness, felt the tortured heaviness of his stare when her eyes adjusted to the dark. The streetlight’s dim glow filtered through the curtain panels. Sandor sat back with his hands gripping his knees and drew a deep breath. For a moment, Sansa thought he might relent to the gentler end of his dual desires; the part that needed her and the comfort she’d so gladly give.

The moment passed. Sandor retreated behind those insurmountable walls of reserve again. He fled to a hidden place, one where Sansa didn’t know the way and couldn’t reach him, but she wouldn’t let him suffer like this and, in a desperate bid, shuffled forward.

“Sandor, I—”

“Go back to bed,” he snapped with a harsh tone he’d never taken with her before.

The growling anger behind it summoned her fear. Sansa spun on her heel and hurried down the hall and beneath the covers in bed but didn’t sleep. With her back to the door, she stared out the window and waited for the storm to pass. The thick blanket of dark clouds eventually yielded to a clear sky. While the moon’s serenity lit up the night, love’s lunar spell had been broken.

Sansa woke the next morning not long after dawn and, while she hoped a new day would wash away the night’s horrors, a hollow pit had formed in her stomach. She turned over to find Sandor sound asleep with his back to her. He didn’t stir when she climbed from bed and retreated to her weekend bag in the corner. As she pulled out her work clothes and fresh undergarments, Sansa’s gaze drifted to him

Even in his sleep, he looked vexed. His dark brows pulled together with a deep crease running between them. Here and there, he flinched, and his breaths were sharp and shallow. Sansa toyed with the idea of waking him, but she’d already learned her lesson about saving him from the demons that hunted him down; the ones he never shared with her, but she knew existed.

It seemed kinder to let him sleep, and perhaps he’d find more peaceful dreams. That proved to be the better instinct. After Sansa showered, brushed her teeth, and changed, she poked her head into the bedroom and Sandor had rolled to his back and his breaths came deep and even now. She put on her make-up, towel dried her hair, and fired up the coffeepot, but waited for it to percolate before returning to the bedroom.

They had so little time left together this morning before Sansa had to return to Devil Creek and pick up her real life again. She and Sandor existed in a daydream with one another, and each trip back to reality was bound to become increasingly difficult and fraught.

Sansa sat at the edge of the bed and the mattress dipping beneath her weight roused Sandor enough that he drew a deep inhale. She stroked his back with a loving touch, and he stirred beneath the thin sheet. Sandor buried his face in the pillow before rolling to his back again. He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and cleared his throat.

“How long have you been awake?” he croaked and pulled his hands from his face. His gaze swept over Sansa’s form, lingering at her jean shorts and the t-shirt that pulled tight across her chest. He evaluated her hair dried in waves and the make-up on her face. “Long enough, I see.”

Sansa cracked a weak smile and reached for Sandor’s hand, but he sat up before she could get ahold of it.

“How did you sleep?” she asked, but he didn’t seem to hear. He gripped her waist and his lips crushed against her neck beneath the corner of her jaw.

“Take your clothes off,” he groaned in a warm pant against her skin and, where this gesture normally left her faintly breathless and lightheaded with giddiness, it now sufficed as a resounding and unnerving echo in the hollowness she felt.

Sansa lifted a hand between them and gently pressed against Sandor’s chest. He pulled away and settled back with tendrils of affront fracturing through his countenance that still held the vestiges of sleep.

“About last night…” Sansa began and searched his eyes for any flicker of understanding, the softening of his reserve.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Sandor asserted on a grunt and a firm shake of the head. “I’m not gonna see you again for a few days.”

He grabbed her by the hips and tossed Sansa to her back on the center of the bed. Sandor rose to his knees and took his manhood, hard and standing at attention, in hand and stroked. The other hand fumbled with the button on her shorts until Sansa snatched his wrist.

“Sandor, no,” she commanded, shoved his hand away, and sat up. “I’m sorry, but no,” she affirmed gentler and pulled her knees to her chest.

He relented and sunk to the edge of the bed. With one forearm draped over his knee, he pinched the bridge of his nose with his other hand and released a heavy sigh. He glanced over his shoulder at Sansa sitting behind him.

“You want romance. That’s what it is, isn’t it?” He turned halfway around, pulling one leg onto the bed, and matched her eyes with a mocking smirk. “I’ve fucked you like I wanted and now you want me to make love to you like you want it.”

The immediacy of her angry tears surprised even Sansa as she hurled herself across the mattress and her feet collided to the floor. She would’ve stomped off, but Sandor grabbed her by the back of her shorts and yanked her towards him. He laid her down on the bed again and ran the back of his knuckles along her cheek.

“What makes you think I don’t want it both ways?” he murmured, and his gaze glided down her body and back up again. “There you go making assumptions again.”

“I have to make assumptions. You tell me so little sometimes.” Sansa sat back up, but Sandor hopped from the bed with a frustrated sigh.

“I tell you plenty. More than most,” he rasped, grabbed his underwear from the floor, and pulled it on. “What is it you need to know now? That I care?”

He turned to her with his hands on his hips. In the light of day and with the sun streaming through the window, their love looked different; the complexities and rough spots now exposed.

Sansa couldn’t meet his eyes and couldn’t answer his question, so she stared at her hands in her lap.

“You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” Sandor rumbled with fresh irritation and paced to his closet where he flung open the door and thumbed through his shirts. “I spent five years being somewhere I didn’t want to be and the two years before that in a fucking hellhole. I’m not spending anymore of my days in a place I don’t wanna be and with people I don’t give a shit about.”

He pulled out a black shirt and tossed it to the bed next to Sansa but didn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he breezed to the dresser and yanked open the top drawer. Where he couldn’t look at her, Sansa couldn’t face her fears straight on. She knew they were there but, with her heart racing in her chest, she closed her eyes and circumvented them altogether, too afraid to ask what she needed from him.

“You have your freedom now—to go places and do things and meet people,” she began haltingly. “I can understand you not wanting to be tied down or to let me in now that I’ve gotten so close.”

Sandor fetched a clean pair of underwear from the drawer and shoved it shut. He spun around to Sansa.

“I wasn’t talking about being tied down,” he contended and rising annoyance splintered his words. He scrutinized Sansa with all that driving intensity behind his eyes. She felt exposed to him now, as if he could peel back her layers and examine whatever he damn well pleased underneath. “What is it that you want? No bullshit. Tell me.”

Sansa drew a soft breath, though her palms were slick with sweat and all she wanted was to hide away. What she owed him was the truth spoken directly, eye-to-eye. Sansa summoned the honesty but steadied her gaze to the closet still open.

“To be loved for who I am, not who people want me to be. And to be seen.”

The paradox wasn’t lost on her. He saw everything, and she realized now she couldn’t grouse about being exposed on one breath and lament about not being seen on the other. She looked to Sandor who listened and waited a moment, a space for Sansa to fill with more truth. She hadn’t any more to give, so she simply matched his eyes.

“I see you,” he said and scanned her body again. “All of you.”

Frustration surmounted in her. Sansa shook her head and cried out, “I’m not talking about that!”

“Neither am I,” Sandor rumbled and pointed at her. “I know what kind of woman you are, and I know the things you want.”

“Now _you’re_ making assumptions.” Sansa shifted to the edge of the bed with her arms folded tight as a vise over her chest and her legs crossed too; the top one bounced and her stomach lurched.

Sandor loomed in front of her, poised to read her like a book. It seemed unfair that he could take one look inside of her and divine all her secrets and midnight fears while his were vaulted and buried away.

“I don’t have to make assumptions. I know you. I know you wanted the world and, while it burns you up with regret, you wanted to get out of your dead-end town and make something of yourself. Most folk would call that brave, Sansa. It didn’t work out, but you still stepped out of the shadow you’d been living under. How many girls like you do that?

“Far too few. They rot away in their shit towns while their ass gets fat and their soul dies a little each day. Is that what you want? To settle for a house with the white-picket fence and a doting husband who will knock you up a couple times until you’re forced to accept suburban bliss and tell yourself it’s what you wanted all along? What about those dreams you wanted? To be a singer, to write your own songs, to see the world and have your freedom, just like your siblings?”

A silent stream of tears ran down Sansa’s cheeks. She swiped at them and whispered, “Those aren’t real.”

“They were real to you!” Sandor’s vehemence drew Sansa’s eyes to his. He clearly refused to let her off the hook and move on from this. “You let them go to settle for the American dream in all its mediocrity and tedium. You’ll be bored out of your mind and trapped in a cage. A sad singing bird.”

He was right and he knew it too. Sandor folded his arms over his chest, settled back on his heels, and waited for some answer that Sansa stubbornly refused to give. With angry tears barreling down her cheeks, she shot from the bed and stormed down the hall, not knowing where to seek shelter now.

Sandor’s pounding footfalls followed her. “Tell me I’m wrong!” he shouted down the hallway and sent Sansa spinning on her heel.

He hovered halfway down the hall and outside the bathroom where he tossed his clean clothes inside and flicked on the light.

“You wanna be seen,” he continued, unrelenting and his voice a crescendo. “I see you. I see you hiding and calling it healing. How’s that for being seen? It’s a two-way road, darlin’. You don’t get to pick one side.”

“You’re the one who said that hopes and dreams are just a luxury,” Sansa fired back with her pulse steadily rising to a frantic beat. “Remember that? It’s one of the first things you ever said to me.”

“For the condemned, they are!” Sandor boomed. “And that’s what I was. Condemned. But you like to skip that part. You have a whole life ahead of you and you throw it away to work some dead-end job and live in an empty house all alone. Waiting for what? For someone to come save you, sweep you away, put you right back on that pedestal again? Is that what you want from me? You want me to ride in on a fucking horse like a _real_ cowboy and save you?”

“You’re being cruel!” Sansa snapped and her hands curled into fists. Her body trembled, shaking like a leaf in a storm as she gnawed her bottom lip to quell its quivering.

“I’m being honest. You just don’t like the truth. You’ve been avoiding mirrors and here I am, the biggest one of all. You wanna be seen? Take a fucking look at yourself! Someone’s gotta push you or you’ll just keep treading water until you wear yourself out and there’s nothing left.”

Sansa tried to stand her ground, but it felt like it was crumbling beneath her. Perhaps she was a coward. Maybe she was never as brave as she thought she was. She sobbed into her palms, too ashamed for Sandor to see her cry like this.

His heavy sigh drifted down the hall along with a whispered and resigned expletive. When Sansa pulled her hands from her face, Sandor’s forearm was propped against the bathroom’s doorframe with his head resting against it. His other hand settled on his hip and he closed his eyes.

“Look, I’ll fuck you good and shut up about it if that’s what you want this to be,” he grumbled and opened his eyes. He stood upright and lowered his voice as he stared at her. “If you want something real with me—love or whatever—you need to get used to this. I told you I don’t like bullshit. I want honesty and it sounds like you want that too until it ruffles your feathers just a little too much.”

Sansa stilled, flabbergasted that it didn’t even occur to him to apologize. Instead, he veritably dug out a trench and planted himself in it, ready to see this war through, no hope of peace now.

_Don’t get sad, get mad._ Arya’s wisdom blazed across Sansa’s mind. What she wouldn’t give to have her sister by her side now. They were always stronger together, her and Arya, but Sansa carried a piece of her sister with her, the same Stark blood coursing through their veins. The absolute nerve this man had waxing lyrical about honesty!

“And what is it you want?” Sansa hollered down the hall, though her voice still trembled. She felt something wolfish rise in her and drew on the reserves of strength that always seemed to manifest when she needed it most. The shift in her demeanor sent Sandor reeling back slightly and his eyes grew wide. “You have a funny way of always turning the spotlight on me so you can hide in the shadows and never have to reveal anything of yourself. And yet, you talk such a big game about honesty. Go on then! Let’s hear it. Where’s your honesty?”

Sandor’s thick arms folded over his bare chest and he shrugged in a nonplussed way that just further incensed Sansa, and she felt her blood pulse hot through her veins.

“I want you. That’s it. No big secret to reveal,” he informed plainly and on a composed breath. “You think there’s more to me than there really is. Don’t over-complicate things, least of all me.”

Just as he decided the boundaries of Sansa’s ingress to his heart and his life, Sandor apparently established the beginning and end of their argument. He slipped into the bathroom without another word and without so much as a glance in Sansa’s direction as she stood rooted to the living room floor. The door shut and Sansa heard the shower turn on.

Defeat crept in with suffocating weight. It bore into Sansa’s chest that housed a heavy heart. She slinked down the hall to the bedroom and gathered up her clothes from the floor. She shoved her belongings into her weekend bag with no mind for how wrinkled they’d all become or the disorganized mess it made.

Part of her found it quite fitting. She’d arrived here with a neatly packed bag and brimming with excitement that threatened to boil over as she’d flung herself into Sandor’s arms like a love-struck idiot. She’d leave in tears and with her bag bulging and lumpy from balled up clothes, a thorough wreck.

Moments later, the shower shut off and Sansa heard the bathroom drawers opening and then slamming shut. She didn’t truly believe that she was a coward and never would’ve left without saying goodbye. But some instinct bid Sansa to ease down the hall and slip into her shoes sitting next to the kitchen’s back door. Sansa quietly cut across the living room just as the bathroom door opened.

Sandor stepped into the hall with a towel wrapped around his waist and turned to Sansa who gripped her bag. Damp tendrils of his hair clung to his chest where rivulets of water followed the contour of his muscles. Disappointment surfaced on his face, drawing his lips in a frown, and Sansa saw the hurt in his eyes.

“I thought you weren’t scared,” he remarked with a derisive snort. “Or have you been lying to me this whole time?”

“I haven’t lied to you,” Sansa murmured and snatched her purse from the coffee table and slung it over her shoulder.

“Ever occur to you that I’m scared too?”

Sansa halted and spun towards him. If she hadn’t believed the words coming from his mouth, then she could’ve seen the sentiment written on his face. He looked scared—eyes wide and something giving way, a small crack in the foundation of his resilient strength that he’d held up for so long. He mortared over it again as his jaw set firm and he shifted his eyes to the wall next to him.

“Ever occur to you to tell me that?” Sansa snapped back and, where he might’ve walled off himself again, the levee of emotions broke in her. She’d held them back with courtesies and the instinct to never speak out of turn. It all crumbled away. “You talk about honesty, Sandor Clegane, but you keep so much inside and it’s eating you up. You want me to expose everything I am to you, but you can’t do the same for me. All I’ve wanted is to be closer to you. That’s it. You can’t go on like you have. How often does that happen? And how long have you been holding it in?”

Sansa pointed to the bedroom, the symbol of all his nightmares and what afflicted him; the unremitting darkness he’d picked up in war but never put down again. He carried it home like so many other men but refused to look at it.

His eyes snapped to her and the embers of anger had been stoked once more. “You don’t know me, girl,” he seethed. “Demand things from me and see how far you get.”

“That. Right there!” Sansa cried, but stood her ground that firmed beneath her feet now. “You want all of me, but I get nothing of you. You say I don’t know you. Then what have we been doing? And how am I supposed to feel when you know so much of me and I’ve opened my heart to you?”

For a moment, Sansa thought he might relent. Sandor hung his head with a sigh, but when he lifted it again, he glared at her from beneath his brows and doubled down on his stance.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he mumbled with another infuriating shrug.

Without a word or a look in his direction, Sansa darted for the front door. She whipped it open and raced down the porch steps to the driveway. Sandor bounded after her and exploded through the storm door that slammed shut behind him.

“Come back inside,” he demanded. 

“No!” Defiant, Sansa unlocked her car door with trembling fingers that almost dropped the keys. She ripped open the passenger door and hurled her bag and purse inside.

“Quit being stubborn and get inside,” Sandor nearly growled, his words rumbling low and slow like a hiss from clenched teeth.

Sansa spun around and flung her arm towards the neighbor’s house where an old man gathered up his newspaper and gaped at Sandor standing in his towel on the front porch. 

“You go inside!” she insisted. Her cheeks burned hot and heart pounded in her chest. “You’ve got neighbors.”

“I don’t give a fuck about them!” Sandor bellowed and, if the neighbors weren’t already watching the scene playing out, they were now. “This is between us.”

Sansa squeezed her eyes shut and only registered now the breaths that passed tattered and broken through her trembling lips. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks at a furious pace.

“I have to go,” she whimpered, the sound issuing from her mouth just as pathetic as she felt in this moment.

Sandor’s anger fled, dispelled in an instant. He hurried down the steps with a look of sheer panic that she might leave everything unresolved.

“Not like this. Please. I’m sorry. Just come back inside.”

Sansa circled the front of her car before Sandor could reach her and she left him holding out his hand, bewildered as he watched her unlock the driver’s side door.

“Sansa, don’t do that. Don’t walk away from me. I didn’t mean to make you cry. And I meant what I said—I’m scared too.”

His words were pleading and incongruent with everything he seemed. She knew he wouldn’t beg her to stay, but this came so close to it.

Sansa opened the car door with a heart thoroughly shattered. Bleary-eyed through tears, she stared across the top of her car at Sandor who was stunned into absolute silence and reeling at the sight of her ready to leave.

This was the danger of living in liminal spaces—the parts not here nor there, the in-between existence of drifting and dreaming, feet never quite touching the ground. The sun had risen on reality. She had a life to live, and so did he. She could stay here, take his hand, let him lead her to the bedroom where they’d make love and make up. She’d call out of work and live another day and night, suspended in a fantasy where he let her into his heart and into his life and loved her in the way she wanted to be loved. It’d all come crashing down, eventually.

“I gotta go,” Sansa whispered with a defeated shrug and fresh tears.

As if the pain wasn’t enough, the guilt was a healthy dose of salt in an already gaping wound. Sandor gripped the stair rail and appeared thoroughly gutted. He bit his bottom lip and hung his head. The man had fought through great battles in his lifetime marred by tragedy, and yet Sansa had never seen him indisposed by anything like he was now.

“Okay,” he mumbled with a soft nod but glanced at Sansa. “This it?”

He waited a moment for her answer but, when Sansa dropped her eyes to her hands and shed more silent and bitter tears, Sandor turned around and retreated into the house, away from the crushing blow she’d inadvertently delivered.

“Sandor,” she called after him, poised to tell him this was categorically _not_ it, but he’d already shut the door and never reappeared.

Sansa climbed into her car, fired up the engine, and allowed herself the time to cry, enough that she could see straight and pull out of the driveway. She couldn’t bear to look back at the house as she drove away, so she kept her eyes steady on the road ahead.

The four-hour drive commenced in a miserable ride of tears and the frantic desire to turn around. Sansa reasoned with herself the whole way, but her eyes shifted to the rearview mirror to an empty stretch of highway behind her and the miles between her and Sandor.

The radio murmured and crackled with static as background noise to the thoughts that tumbled across her mind. She played it all over in her head, retracing the steps that’d gotten them here. The heavy thoughts must’ve manifested on a leaden foot to the gas pedal.

Sansa rolled into Devil Creek a half hour earlier than she expected. At the lone stoplight heading into town, she adjusted the rearview mirror to check her face. Mascara caked beneath her eyes and ran like black rivers down her cheeks. A red-eyed mess, Sansa would have no choice but to swing by the house and put herself back to rights, perhaps forgoing mascara for tonight. Her diner shift promised to be long and difficult, a circus of forced smiles and put-on courtesies.

Sansa pulled into her driveway with her heart sinking further to the pit of her stomach. She killed the engine but for many long moments couldn’t bear to go inside. She’d left home in raptures over her excitement and drifting away on daydreams of what her life with Sandor might be. Something about returning, defeated and devastated, tore her to bits as she stared down the front door.

With a deep breath, Sansa collected her courage and her bags from the passenger seat. She fumbled with the keys on the way up the concrete path to the porch and propped open the storm door.

Just as she was about to jab the key into the lock, Sansa stilled. The hair on her arms stood on end. Her instincts registered the oddity before the realization sunk in. The door was unlatched and cracked open. She closed her eyes. This was wrong. Of course, the door wasn’t open.

She opened her eyes again, but the horror remained. Her pulse thrummed wild and Sansa settled back. She frantically traced her memories. Maybe she hadn’t locked it. She’d left floating on a cloud of foolish giddiness. She’d become careless. That’s all it was. Distracted and careless.

Sansa lifted a trembling hand to the knob and cracked the door an inch but waited. Her heart slammed in her chest and loud in her ears. She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t think. Nothing came. No one bounding towards her. No danger lurking inside.

She pushed the door open another inch and peeked inside. Nothing. Just the afternoon light filtering through the windows and a haunting stillness that suffocated as Sansa dipped one tentative foot inside.

Her bags slipped from her shoulders, and Sansa discarded them quietly near the door. She waited. Her ears strained to listen for any odd sounds, things that didn’t belong. Her knees wobbled as she took slow steps into the living room. Her throat went dry. She swallowed hard past a lump there, sick with fear and her head swimming.

Something told her to run, to go, to leave. The oppressive warning slammed into her with the knowledge that she wasn’t alone. _Someone’s here._ The house felt different. The air heavier. Danger lurked.

From somewhere down the hall, Sansa heard it. A door creaked on its hinges. The floorboard in the hall groaned beneath a slow footstep. Sansa spun around and dashed for the front door, but whoever it was raced down the hall and exploded into the living room towards Sansa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tuesday and welcome back to this story! I missed you all so much and I’m excited to crack into the rest of this fic!
> 
> As for this chapter, as many of you commented, your intuition had picked up the ripples in the water; other shoe had to drop…😬
> 
> Happy belated birthday to Crushnotsosecret! I missed your birthday with the week off, but I hope it was wonderful! 
> 
> Thank you all so much for all the kindness and love you’ve shown me and this story! It means so much and I feel very blessed.


	14. People Are Strange

“Surprise!” The chipper voice shrieked with joy mismatched to Sansa’s abject terror.

Her chest heaved and eyes burned. Her hand groped for the doorknob, poised to burst through the storm door and into the street, but she spun around. Arya stood in the middle of the living room with her arms outstretched, but her exaggerated smile vanished as she gaped at Sansa.

“Jesus Christ!” Sansa shouted and burst into tears. The release left her dizzy and reeling, desperately scrambling to regain her bearings. “What are you doing here?” she gasped, and her pulse drummed a deafening beat in her ears.

“Oh my God! Oh no, don’t cry. I’m sorry!” Arya scrambled across the room to Sansa. “What the hell happened? Who did this to you?” Her gray eyes flashed with anger, strangely reminiscent of how Sandor looked when fury was fresh upon him.

Sansa slumped against the wall, and her temples throbbed with a splintering headache. Like waking from a nightmare, the return to reality left her limbs wobbly and head swimming.

“No one did this to me,” she panted and waved off her sister. “I’m fine.”

“Clearly, you’re not fine!” Arya protested and planted her hands on her hips. Her foot tapped against the floor in a nervous rhythm.

Arya possessed a chameleon quality, always looking slightly different every time Sansa saw her. She’d apparently chopped off her hair, and it now fell in thick, dark waves past her chin and feathered around her long face in a shag that suited her. So too did her bellbottom jeans and thin baseball shirt with faded lettering.

“I tried calling you,” Arya chided with a jabbing finger that could take an eye out. “Jeyne had to pick me up from the bus station and drop me off here.”

Sansa’s head lolled back and hit the wall with a thud. Real life wasn’t letting her off the hook—missed calls; ignored errands; all the responsibilities of adulthood piling up. The daydream lifted and what it left behind wasn’t all that enticing. Perhaps the only silver lining was her little sister, back home and looking half-irritated and half-consumed with worry.

Sansa collected her composure and peeled herself from the wall. In a few quick strides, she traversed the room and pulled her sister into her arms.

“You’re here,” she breathed into the embrace and closed her eyes to relish the moment—Arya’s signature scent of patchouli and sandalwood; the way she squirmed in Sansa’s arms; the hard pat on the back that always accompanied her sister’s hugs.

When Arya pulled away, her nose crinkled, and she reared her head back with judgmental horror and embarrassment on Sansa’s behalf.

“God, have you seen yourself? You look like a train wreck.”

Arya spared no feelings, but Sansa laughed softly in response. Her sister’s humor lifted and lightened the mood, the only joy Sansa could derive now.

“Go wash your face. I can’t take you seriously like that.”

With a roll of the eyes and pat on the ass, Arya sent Sansa down the hall to the bathroom. She flicked on the light but evaded the mirror and the truth it told as she turned on the faucet and fetched a bar of soap from the shower.

_“You’ve been avoiding mirrors.”_

Sandor’s words were a resounding echo and a call to face the music, and it started with facing her reflection. Sansa pulled a washcloth from the towel ring and lifted her gaze to the mirror. Arya had had the right of it. Mascara caked beneath her eyes still swollen and red from crying. Her cheeks were blotchy, and the tears had streaked through her powder and blush.

Sansa dipped the washcloth in warm water and ran soap over it until suds formed. She scrubbed off her makeup and washed clean some of the pain; or at least she hoped it might work that way, but matters of the heart were rarely so easily dissolved.

After she applied lotion to her face and combed through her hair, Sansa retreated down the hall and into the kitchen. Arya dug through the cabinets and had already set out two teacups and other requisite accoutrements of tea.

Sansa sat at the table and watched her sister move about like a small bull in a china shop—her rapid and forceful movements; footsteps that made an awful ruckus despite her petite frame; the perpetual look of determination painted on Arya’s face, no matter how mundane the task.

Arya set two spoons at the center of the table and cracked a wry smile. “Feel better?”

“A little,” Sansa answered truthfully and admired the sugar bowl’s delicate painted pattern. Their mother had always taken tea with them. It was a hand-me-down tradition from their grandmother, a proper English rose plucked from London and dropped in the middle of Texas. While neither their mother nor grandmother were alive, Sansa and Arya carried on the tradition.

“Well, you look better.” Arya’s girlish laughter filled the kitchen like a forgotten song, and Sansa smiled fondly at rediscovering the sound.

“I wasn’t gonna come to town this early, you know,” Arya informed with a pointed look just as the tea kettle wailed on the stove. With her back to Sansa, Arya filled the teapot with boiling water and dropped the tea bags in.

Sansa traced her memories, but recollection failed her at first. She couldn’t remember if Arya mentioned a trip to town during their last phone call. As Arya carried the teapot to the table, remembrance bloomed in Sansa.

“Shit, that’s right. The carnival is this weekend.” With her elbows resting on the table—something that would send her mother and grandmother rolling in their graves—Sansa breathed into her palms.

Arya always made the trip home for the annual Devil Creek carnival. As Sansa understood it, city council had deliberated for long hours about canceling the affair. By a razor thin margin, they decided the town needed a distraction, but a shadow had already been cast over the event that routinely drew crowds from at least two towns over.

“I completely forgot,” Sansa muttered and pulled her hands from her face. “I swear I’ve lost all track of time. Things have been strange here.”

Silence blanketed the kitchen with an eerie heft. And here it was—the grotesque shape reality had taken, distorted and dark at the edges. In the time she’d been away, it’d grown dense and rolled through town like a fog of terror descending. 

“So I heard,” Arya said on a quiet breath and matched Sansa’s eyes. She retrieved the milk from the fridge before taking her spot at the other end of the table.

“You sure know how to downplay and sugarcoat things.” Arya glanced at Sansa with a look that scolded but was content to let it go. She served up the tea and pushed one cup to Sansa. 

“I don’t sugarcoat, and I only downplayed because I never want you to worry,” Sansa defended and felt justified in it now. The last thing this town needed was another young woman in it. As much as she wanted her sister here, Arya’s presence upped the ante for Sansa and the stakes were growing too high.

“It’s a good thing I came when I did.” Arya plucked a sugar cube from the bowl and plopped it in her teacup. “I’ve been away for too long, but I knew something was wrong.”

Arya usually drifted into town mostly unannounced. Sansa didn’t quite know how Arya had been living her life. The girl crossed the country in zigzags with her boyfriend who Sansa had met a few times. Gendry was polite and kind-hearted. The two of them traveled around in his VW van. Part activism, part adventure, and entirely foreign to Sansa, the pair made it work, and it was probably the best outcome for Arya, who Sansa swore came of age one generation too late, a late-blooming flower child.

With her teaspoon stirring in mindless swirls, Arya gazed out the sliding glass door to the backyard as if something lurked out there and waited to find its way in. As far as Sansa was concerned, it already had. The hair on her arms stood on end and something ominous joined them in the room. Sansa couldn’t pinpoint it, but her sister seemed to notice too.

“This town feels different,” Arya whispered and dropped her spoon to the saucer. 

Sansa swallowed hard and sat up straight. “What do you mean?” she asked with delicate nonchalance as she fixed her tea with milk and sugar.

She knew damn well what it meant. Fear arrived in town long before the first girl went missing. Dark portent lingered amongst the sizzling heat of sunny days, and the dissonance of it had only amplified the horror.

“I don’t know. Just dark, heavy. I’m not used to seeing everyone so on edge.” Arya’s teacup shook as she lifted it to her lips, and something in her sister’s fear galvanized Sansa’s own unease.

Arya smirked and settled back in her seat with her teacup pressed between her palms. Sansa sipped her tea and garnered comfort from the familiarity—fragrant steam rising from her cup; conversation shared with the pot at the middle of the table; the feel of the china reserved solely for this ritual.

“There’s another reason you’ve been losing track of time.” Arya quirked one brow at Sansa, well-matched to her devious smile. “Tell me about this soldier of yours.”

“He’s not a soldier anymore,” Sansa corrected and felt her lips curl in a timid smile. She tucked her hair behind her ear, but the pang in her chest nearly stole her breath.

It never occurred to Sansa to be embarrassed about Sandor’s involvement in the war and she wasn’t now, but she also wasn’t so naïve to think people wouldn’t take up unfair judgement of him. Time had passed, almost a decade since his service, and yet the wounds in the country ran deep and folk still had something to say about it.

“I take it Jeyne told you about the other bit,” Sansa said coolly and steeled her spine in preempt to judgement. No matter how crazy Sandor drove her, Sansa would always take up his defense. 

“Prison? Yeah.” Arya gave a blasé shrug, apparently unmoved by the information. “We’ve all got pasts. I won’t hold it against anybody. What I will hold against him is hurting you.” With her face a fierce visage, Arya pointed at Sansa. “He better never treat you like Joffrey did or else you’ll be writing _me_ in prison after I’m put away for murdering him.”

Sansa giggled at her sister’s vehemence, though she didn’t dare question the sincerity. She quieted and stared into her teacup.

“He’s a good man,” Sansa whispered and lifted her eyes.

Arya stared across the table with one brow lifted and listened with dubious attention. She sipped her tea and waited for Sansa to continue. A product of maturity, Arya now offered the space for people to plead their case instead of launching headlong into diatribes.

“Sandor is strong and practical,” Sansa began and traced the shape of his being, gathering what words she could to describe him in his complicated entirety. “Witty and brave. Hardworking and honest. He’s good to me and he makes me happy.”

Arya nodded slowly and with thoughtful introspection softening her features until a wicked smile flashed across her lips. “You give him your cookies?”

“Arya!” Sansa gasped, but broke into laughter. Her cheeks burned hot and undoubtedly crimson.

“You did, you tramp!” Arya cackled and pelted Sansa with a sugar cube from the bowl.

Their laughter faded and the quiet resumed, only punctuated by the kitchen clock ticking to a faint beat. Arya looked to Sansa once more.

“You say he makes you happy, but you came through that door looking like a mascara monster. This is what I mean when I say you sugarcoat; sometimes things just don’t add up. What happened?”

Sansa cleared her throat and gazed into her teacup once more, as if she might divine new meaning from the swirl of bubbles as she stirred. She searched for an explanation, but only the futility revealed itself. What was their argument about anyway? It all seemed frivolous and unnecessary; their rough patch relatively smooth compared to the sharp edges of her last relationship that cut deep and drew blood.

“We got into a fight. I don’t really know who started it, and I guess it doesn’t matter. I just got scared. We both did,” Sansa explained the best she could, encapsulating the mess in the simplest way she knew how. “I think he reveals too little. I’m sure he thinks I want too much.”

With her head tilted, Arya nodded and leaned forward in her seat. Her forearms folded against the table.

“He has those nightmares that the men who fought in the war sometimes get,” Sansa added quietly as if divulging one of his greatest and most closely guarded secrets.

“It’s their own way of working through what they saw,” Arya offered, but Sansa shook her head.

“It doesn’t seem to help very much,” Sansa countered. She knew that darkness afflicted Sandor but was at a loss for how to chase it away. It seemed insurmountable even for her, so she could scarcely imagine all he grappled with.

“He said something that struck a nerve with me,” she admitted to Arya, and mostly it was a call for truth. Like Sandor, Sansa trusted her sister not to lie to her.

“What did he say?”

Sansa dropped her eyes and spun her teacup in leisurely circles. “That I’m hiding, not healing.” When Arya said nothing, Sansa’s gaze searched out her sister across the table. “Do you agree with that?”

“Yes,” Arya answered with a firm nod and not a moment of thought or hesitation.

Sansa’s mouth hung open and laughter poured out. “You sure summoned that answer fast! Tell me how you really feel.”

“Oh, sorry.” Arya propped a balled fist beneath her chin and stared at the ceiling in feigned contemplation. She gave a little hum before leveling her eyes across the table. “Yes. It’s no excuse for him to make you cry, but he hit the nail on the head.”

With a resounding groan, Sansa crumpled against the table, her forehead hitting the surface. Two for two, they were both right. Sansa knew it somewhere deep inside of herself. She’d just been dodging that particular truth, hoping it’d give up the chase and disappear one day. She lifted her head and rested her chin on her forearm. Arya regarded her with sympathy, dousing some of her ferocity or at least bringing it to heel.

“Look, our family knows better—certainly better than this Sandor guy—the hell you went through with Joffrey,” Arya began with tender conviction. “As if that wasn’t enough, then momma passed away. You needed time to pull yourself back together, so don’t go feeling bad about that.

“But Sansa, you’ve been living in this house all alone with the ghosts of what our family once was. You’ve already squeezed the best you could from this town. That well ran dry a long time ago.”

Sansa sat up and drew a deep breath. “Somebody needed to be here, a beacon back home,” she tried to reason but her argument just sounded weak to even her own ears and apparently to Arya’s too. The girl’s head lolled to the side with surmounting exasperation. 

“That somebody isn’t you,” Arya insisted. “I’m fine. Jon will finish out his assignment up north and, if you think he’s coming back here, you’ve got another thing coming. Rickon isn’t coming back either and that’s a good thing. You know he’d raise nothing but hell in this town. And Bran would just wither away here. We all needed to get out, and that includes you.”

Arya paused long enough for her words to sink in. Sansa nodded and slumped back in her seat with posture her mother would have some opinions about.

“The only one not willing to let go is you,” Arya continued. “Look, if you really want to stay in this town, that’s one thing, but don’t make this place your cage on our behalf. None of us asked you to do that. I appreciate you feeling like you need to step into our mother’s role, but you don’t. She’s gone. Some things are better left to rest.”

Sansa shifted her eyes out the back door and nodded mindlessly. Her sister’s take on the matter felt something like severing the invisible ties that bound her here. She hadn’t meant to put down the wrong roots but, true to the saying, no good deeds went unpunished and Sansa had been on the receiving end of that punishment for far too long. Perhaps it was time to rip up her roots from this town’s barren soil.

“We all worry about you,” Arya said, gentler and with a doting softness that drew Sansa’s gaze. “I don’t want to see you waste away here. You deserve another shot at getting out. It didn’t work out the first time, but that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to stay. You need to live your life, one that’s your own.”

In moments like this, Sansa was thunderstruck at how her siblings had all grown up. Her memories of them were often shaded with too many colors of the past—their childlike habits and mannerisms—until Sansa was faced with the adults they’d become; all of them growing in such different directions, but she was proud, nonetheless.

“I’m supposed to be giving you wisdom,” Sansa remarked through a smile. “Not the other way around.”

Her eyes drifted to the clock and the time easing dangerously close to the start of her shift at the diner.

“You really have to go to work?” Arya asked with a hidden plea in the question. “Can’t you just call out sick?”

The temptation allured in ways Sansa hadn’t expected and she temporarily humored the thought—an afternoon spent catching up with her sister; hearing the wild tales from Arya’s adventures; eating junk food and nursing a broken heart.

But Sansa knew her tendency to wallow in grief as she had been. She’d been putting off picking herself up. _“I’ll do it tomorrow,”_ was the excuse, and Sansa had wasted an entire year’s worth of tomorrows.

“I can’t,” she answered, kind but firm. “Sometimes the best thing you can do is dry your tears and push through.”

Sansa drew a resilient breath and stood from the table. “And there’s my bit of sisterly wisdom.” She kissed the top of Arya’s head and gathered up the teacups and, with them, a bit of her composure and strength too.

* * *

Friday night was a phantasm of normalcy. All week long, Arya had helped put Sansa back to rights, enough that she could pull herself together for her shifts at the diner. Her sister didn’t quite know how Sansa cried at nights, but their childhood home was never known for sheltering secrets. Most mornings, Arya offered sympathetic smiles but didn’t ask questions. There wouldn’t have been a point. Arya was a smart girl and knew the origin of Sansa’s tears.

They rode with Theon and Jeyne to the carnival. Theon snagged a shaded parking spot beneath an overgrowth of bushes and vines that grew thick up an oak tree. Once a year, Devil Creek became an attraction of sorts, or as attractive as it could ever hope to be. All week long, trucks of the traveling carnival pulled into town towing mangled masses of metal that’d eventually become a Ferris wheel, pendulum ride, or rollercoaster.

Stalls had been erected in long rows of carnival games—Skee ball, high striker, balloon pops, and others Sansa had never seen before. All manner of delectable food could be found here too, everything deep fried to oblivion or charred on the grills behind the food stands.

Sansa sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Arya, whose hands were sticky from a snow cone. The syrup had seeped through the waxed paper and dried against Arya’s fingers. The girl’s lips were stained cherry red and she laughed at something Theon said.

The saccharine scent of funnel cake wafted so thick in the air that Sansa could almost taste it. The gentle breeze carried the music-box sound of a calliope from the nearby carousel. A rainbow of lights dazzled as the sun melted in cotton candy colors against the western horizon and lightning bugs flittered about like stars that’d descended from the night sky.

Arya, Sansa, Theon, and Jeyne perched on the low brick wall near the center of the action. They each indulged in their choice of a treat, pacing themselves to save room for more as the night wore on.

The crowd moved in packs. Some faces were familiar, but folks had pulled into the parking lot from Oklahoma and Kansas. The carnival had infused the town with some much-needed levity but exacerbated the paranoia and sideways glances the town folk paid to strangers. The four of them were no different as they people-watched and muttered under-the-breath commentary.

“He looks like a serial killer.” Theon discretely tipped his head to a man at the ring toss wearing khaki shorts, a tan shirt, and tube socks pulled up to his knees. The man smiled wide beneath a thick golden mustache, but aviator sunglasses obscured his eyes even though sunset was well underway.

Sansa ripped off a piece of cotton candy from the paper stick and popped it into her mouth. She glanced at Theon. His mustache was dusted with powder sugar from a funnel cake he and Jeyne shared.

“He does not,” Sansa laughed and took up defense of a man she didn’t know. Leeriness and mistrust had stolen the best of this town, robbing all benefit of the doubt, but for good reason, she supposed.

Sansa studied the man again as he clumsily tossed plastic rings at thick bottles lined up in rows. A carnival worker looked on with bored apathy at the outcome. The man seemed normal enough, but the tragedy of dead girls had turned neighbors against one another. No one knew where danger lurked and even the most innocuous among them still garnered suspicion.

“No one normal wears all beige,” Arya commented and folded up the soggy remnants of the paper cone. She turned to the pristine funnel cake behind her. For just a wisp of a girl, Arya could put down food. “It’s the color of someone trying to blend in.” Her eyes narrowed at the unsuspecting man who went about his business and merrily bungled his chance at a prize. 

“Well, he could look like that guy.”

Theon tipped his head to a man in pristine white boots and a matching leather jacket with glittering gold details, everything encrusted in rhinestones. If the man in beige meant to blend in, this man’s strategy was to stand out. He turned halfway around, as if he’d felt the attention on him.

“Is that Clarence from the hardware store?” Arya yelped and Sansa might’ve chided her for being so loud, but she squinted her eyes to confirm it was indeed Clarence. He’d graduated from high school a year behind Arya and three years behind Sansa. He’d always been a shy kid, all knobby knees and gangly limbs, even now despite his gaudy get-up.

“What is he wearing?” Sansa asked in amused disbelief.

Theon shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Beats the hell outta me. He climbed out of a brand-new truck looking like that. George said Mormont must’ve given him a raise, but that would have to be one hell of a raise. I heard from someone else that his daddy is half-way out the door and feels so bad about breaking up the family, he’s been showering good ole’ Clarence with bought affection.”

“Well, money never could buy good taste,” Jeyne commented and leaned forward, her hair in long, curling pigtails. She lowered her voice and shifted her eyes between Sansa, Arya, and Theon.

“Since we’re on gossip, I meant to tell y’all, when I was in line for funnel cake, I overheard the two people in front of me talking. They said the police in their town are looking into this traveling carnival. The murderer could be one of the carnies.”

Jeyne settled back, positively pleased with herself for bringing this information to the proverbial table. Theon smiled at Jeyne, a secret smile that he must’ve assumed no one else saw. Sansa had been noticing it for weeks now. Arya turned to her and stuck one finger in her mouth as she mimicked a gag. They all inherited an uneasy silence and, with fresh perspective, pondered the carnival workers who looked dead on their feet.

“It makes sense,” Arya piped up as she chomped on a big bite of funnel cake. She held the grease-soaked paper plate towards Sansa, who tore off a chunk. “Think about it—they travel from town to town. They don’t stay long. They have plenty of opportunity to find their victim in the crowd. Everyone’s too busy stuffing their pie holes with fried food, guzzling cheap beer, and spending their paycheck on tokens to win some shitty stuffed animal that’ll just end up at a yard sale. People aren’t gonna notice right away if a girl disappears.”

Goosebumps prickled Sansa’s bare arms and legs with a sudden chill from the breeze. The light seemed to dim, as if a shadow had fallen or the sun dipped below the horizon. The carnival music took on a nightmarish quality. Arya was right, as she so often was, but seemed to garner no joy from it. Instead, when Sansa glanced over at her sister, Arya’s features had deadened to somber fear. Jeyne tore up pieces of funnel cake with mindless disquiet, and Theon just looked utterly helpless.

“I hope they find whoever it is,” Sansa whispered and rubbed her arms. She’d been saying that for weeks now. Everyone had.

Theon inhaled deep as if to drink in the twilight and exhaled it on one long shaky breath. “I have a secret.”

Arya’s gaze snapped to him. “Spill it, Greyjoy.” 

Jeyne’s eyes filled with fright, and she gave a sharp shake of the head. “If it’s a secret, you should keep it to yourself,” she cautioned, and not for the occasional bought of haughtiness she was prone to. The girl looked terrified and content to bury her head in the sand.

“Let’s hear it,” Sansa cajoled with gentler insistence than Arya, but stared at Theon just as expectantly. 

He shifted uncomfortably on the brick wall and cleared his throat, and it looked as though he’d thought the better of divulging whatever this secret was. When he spoke again, he did so with his chin tucked to his chest and his eyes steady on the half-eaten funnel cake in his lap. Perhaps it was easier to confess to the fried dough than three women intently listening to him.

“I was down at the market getting supplies for the bar. The sheriff was there shooting the shit with some folk. I wandered over to see what they were talking about. Sheriff says the FBI is involved in the Devil Creek cases now. They came rolling in not too long ago.”

“Good!” Sansa hollered and her outburst drew the attention of a carnival worker at a nearby stall. She eyed the man warily and lowered her voice. “That means something will hopefully be done; a lead, a suspect, anything.”

Theon folded his arms over his chest and gave a doubtful shake of the head. “Sheriff didn’t sound too hopeful. He says the FBI profiler is having a hell of a time with this one, and there haven’t been any witnesses or descriptions of the killer.”

A cumbersome quiet filled the space between them once more. Arya shifted a grave stare at Sansa, who took her sister’s hand and gave a small squeeze.

“Anyway,” Theon sighed to disperse the silence. He hopped from the wall and handed off the remaining funnel cake to Arya. “Y’all up for the Tilt-A-Whirl?” he asked as he stretched his arms over his head to pop his back.

“After I just shot-gunned a snow cone and funnel cake?” Arya chuckled. “Absolutely not.”

Theon helped Jeyne from the wall and turned to Sansa, his brows lifted in question.

“No thanks,” Sansa declined. “You two go on. We’ll catch up with you.”

Jeyne gave a delicate wave at Sansa and Arya and wandered off next to Theon’s side. The crowd seemed to swallow them up and perhaps they thought they were out of eyesight, but Theon slipped his hand into Jeyne’s halfway down the row of stalls.

“They’re screwing,” Arya declared and delved into Theon’s unfinished funnel cake. 

Sansa’s lips peeled in a smile and she scanned the crowd again, but Theon and Jeyne had disappeared. “You really think Jeyne gave up the goods?”

Jeyne had humored the story of Sansa’s wild night with Sandor after he’d shown up in town. The girl had smiled tersely and nodded politely but, halfway through the tale, Sansa’s manners bid her to stop. “ _Nice Texas girls don’t talk about these things.”_ Sansa had read the thoughts flashing across Jeyne’s mind.

Arya contemplated Sansa’s question. She too had grown up with the girl and saw firsthand how fiercely Jeyne loved Jesus and swore up and down and back through again that she’d save herself for her wedding night.

“Alright, she’s at least seen his dick. I’ll put my money on that,” Arya conceded. “I don’t know about…” Arya’s index finger jabbed through the circled fingers of her other hand to gesture sex.

Sansa huffed a laugh. With the heels of her hands pressed against the edge of the brick wall, she leaned forward and gazed up at the darkening sky. Even with all the carnival lights, the stars still shone tonight.

“You alright?” Arya asked quietly, as if reluctant to tear Sansa from her reverie.

“No,” she admitted, no use in fabricating happiness. Sansa told her sister everything. “I feel very unsettled.”

She stared at the tips of her shoes trailing through the dirt. _I wish Sandor was here._ The void his absence left behind was all-consuming. It invaded her waking thoughts, the daydreams that no longer held sweetness but remained anyhow. By night, it infested her dreams to steal her sleep. With no relief and nowhere to turn, Sansa desperately sought a way out of the misery.

With her elbow, Arya gently nudged Sansa. “You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?”

A doleful smile graced Sansa’s lips, and she turned to her sister. “How can you tell?”

“You’re my sister. I always know.”

Sansa nodded and her gaze drifted across a wide expanse of grass that stretched towards the parking lot. A murder of crows hopped towards something in the grass and others circled the sky.

“Sometimes I miss him so much it hurts to breathe.”

“You still can’t get ahold of him by phone?” Arya asked in disbelief because she already knew the answer. She’d been there to witness it all.

Over the past week, Sansa had phoned Sandor each day, but to no avail. She even called him once on her lunch break at the diner, hoping to catch him in the middle of the day. The phone had rung endlessly until Sansa hung up, more devastated with defeat as the days crept along.

She shook her head, and her throat burned with the promise of more tears. “It’s been almost a week now.”

“You could always make a trip to Cactus,” Arya suggested and propped her head against Sansa’s shoulder. 

“Not while you’re here.” Sansa rested her cheek on the top of Arya’s head; her baby sister, she didn’t quite know what she’d do once Arya left. The house would resume its emptiness and lose so much of its life.

“Well, I’m going home in a few days.” Arya sat back up and cast a pointed look at Sansa. “So that excuse is about to expire.”

_Swallow your pride._ Sansa had been telling herself that all week. It wasn’t so much pride that instilled a healthy dose of fear in her, but the prospect of rejection. She could turn up in Cactus, either at Sandor’s doorstep or perhaps the bar where he worked, and he might turn her away. She knew damn well that she’d wounded him. Sansa hadn’t forgot the look in his eyes and the hurt fracturing through.

“I am the one who did the leaving,” Sansa acknowledged. “I suppose I’ll need to be the one who does the coming back.”

Arya agreed with an emphatic nod and tapped her finger to the tip of her nose, but quieted. Her eyes shifted to Sansa, then away, and back again as she gnawed her bottom lip.

“Okay, I gotta tell you something,” Arya sighed and turned to Sansa with one leg pulled onto the brick wall.

“What is it?” Sansa asked and waited for what felt like an eternity before Arya answered.

“Sandor called this afternoon while you were in the shower.”

Sansa glowered at Arya and felt her jaw clench as she heaved a frustrated breath. Arya scrambled, quick to fill in the space that Sansa’s irritation had left behind.

“I was going to tell him to fuck off, but he sounded worried and wanted you to call him back.”

“Worried about me?” Sansa asked.

“No, about Farrah Fawcett,” Arya groaned and rolled her eyes before gripping Sansa’s forearm and shrieking, “Yes, about you!”

“What did you tell him?” Sansa pressed and cast a displeased stare at her sister when Arya played at sweetness with a forced smile and innocent shrug.

“I said that you were going out for the evening with someone and that you’d call him back tomorrow.”

Arya averted her eyes to the funnel cake that she poked with her finger, anything to avoid Sansa’s penetrating stare.

“Did you make it sound like I was on a date?” Sansa demanded and folded her arms over her chest with a huff.

“I didn’t happen to specify one way or another,” Arya defended with another shrug, though she looked like she wanted to melt into the brick wall. “It’s technically true. I’m someone.”

“Arya,” Sansa whined into her palms and expelled a deep breath before pulling her hands away. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner that he called?”

When she answered the question, Arya spoke soft and, like Theon, directed her words to the funnel cake that apparently was easier to confess to.

“Because I was afraid you’d run off to Cactus to be with him,” Arya said and tried to cover over the obvious tenderness and good intentions with nonchalance, but failed miserably. “And I wanted you to come to the carnival with me.”

Sansa wrapped her arms around Arya’s shoulders and pulled her into an embrace.

“I wouldn’t have done that,” she muttered and held on tightly. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right here with you.” When Sansa let go, she leveled her eyes at Arya. “You’re my sister. And no man will ever come between us. I don’t care who he is.”

A reluctant smile formed on Arya’s lips as she gave a faint nod. “Oh, I know what will cheer you up!” she gasped and slipped from the wall.

She nearly dragged Sansa down with her as she tugged at her hand and abandoned the funnel cake on the brick wall. Arya shouldered through the crowd with Sansa close behind. Laughter floated on the breeze—from children with sticky fingers and painted faces; men who’d imbibed too much and talked too loud; clusters of teenage girls all giggling with one another.

The carnival exploded with vibrant colors against a muted sky and erupted in dizzying sounds, flashing lights, and the air fragrant with spun sugar and charred meat. It all overwhelmed the senses and Sansa clung tighter to Arya’s hand as they approached a small tent covered in dark purple fabric. The sign read “Madame Fortuna” in bright red letters and boasted a painted caricature of a fortune teller.

“Oh God!” Sansa laughed and stared at the sign.

Arya yanked on Sansa’s arm and dragged her towards the tent’s flap. “Remember how mad momma was when we saw that fortune teller as girls?”

Mad was an understatement. Profoundly disappointed was more like it, and that had been far worse than just anger. Good Christian girls didn’t get their fortunes told, their mother had warned, but ultimately let it go, recognizing that there were more dangerous things in this world than carnival mystics.

“I thought we’d never hear the end of it,” Sansa reminisced and followed Arya, who pushed through the cascading fabric that functioned as a door. Inside, a string of white Christmas lights hung from the tent’s metal frame and illuminated the small space. A woman sat at a table and quickly tucked away a magazine as she cleared her throat and stood.

The short, rotund woman dripped in chiffon and lace that hung from her body in layers. She held out her hand in a motion for Sansa and Arya to sit. A black scarf wrapped around her head and tacky rhinestone chandelier earrings hung from each lobe. The bangle bracelets running up each arm clanked and clattered as she resumed her seat.

“Welcome,” the woman said on a deep voice, thick with an Eastern European accent.

Sansa and Arya sat on the other side of a fold-out table that was similarly dressed in layers of shimmery, jewel-toned fabrics. The woman reached beneath the table and flicked on a switch that lit up a crystal ball.

“What are you here for today?” the woman asked. She rested her elbows on the table and propped her chin on folded hands. “Palms, tarot, aura reading.”

Sansa glanced at Arya who shrugged. “Palms,” Sansa replied, because it seemed the most straightforward and least likely to devolve into a scam.

“I give you deal,” the fortune teller said after a brief silence and settled back in her chair that groaned with her movement. “Two dollars upfront for the both of you because you look like nice girls.”

As Arya dug into her back pocket, Sansa swatted her hand away and plucked two one-dollar bills from her purse and slid them across the table. The woman took the money and tossed it in a bucket at her feet. She smiled with red lipstick staining her teeth.

“Who goes first?” She reached across the table and, before Sansa or Arya could respond, took Arya’s hand. “Small girl. Give me your hand.”

Arya didn’t have a choice. The woman yanked her hand towards her and ran her fingertip over the ridges and lines of Arya’s palm. Sansa noted the woman’s press-on nails and the overwhelming scent of musky perfume. Her thin painted brows knit together as she stared at Arya’s palm and muttered to herself.

“You are in search of something,” the woman announced with dark and dramatic flair as she gazed intently at Arya.

Sansa stifled a guffaw and discretely shifted her eyes to her sister, whose face was impassable, intent to reveal nothing to this woman. Madame Fortuna continued to study Arya but seemed to bristle and shifted in her seat.

“New home. New horizons. You live a life of adventure,” the woman mumbled and continued to contemplate Arya’s palm. “You have man?” She lifted her gaze.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me?” Arya snickered.

The woman scowled, her red lip lifting in a slight sneer as she narrowed her eyes.

“With your aura, you not find man easily,” she informed with arrogant insistence she had no right to. Sansa crossed her arms over her chest and eased back in her seat. “For extra, I tell you what else your aura says.”

“We’re not paying extra for an aura reading,” Arya chortled and tilted her head with a sigh. “What else do you see?”

Leaned forward, Arya propped her free elbow on the table and listened as Madame Fortuna divulged what sounded like a scripted fortune pulled from the air and not much else.

“You will face great obstacle very soon…in next year…but you will overcome it. You are a young soul. Many lessons left to learn on this planet. Keep your mind and your heart open and you will succeed.” The woman rotated Arya’s hand and counted the lines on the side right beneath Arya’s pinky finger. “You will have two and a half loves in your life.”

“What is a half supposed to mean?” Arya snorted.

“He will not love you back,” the woman said, obviously satisfied with herself as she flashed a snide smile.

“Alright. Thanks,” Arya grumbled and snatched her hand away.

Sansa was content to call this all a wash and a solid waste of two dollars, but both Arya and the fortune teller stared at her. Sansa sat up straight and laid her right hand face up on the table. The woman took her hand and studied it for far longer than she did Arya’s; so long that Sansa almost made a nervous joke about her future being unreadable.

“Now you,” the woman mumbled, and her intense gaze settled on Sansa. While the rest of her seemed exaggerated at best and fraudulent at worst, her eyes possessed a piercing quality that unnerved Sansa. “You have softer, older soul.”

She drew a steady breath as the woman studied her palm once more and traced the lines with one fingertip.

“Ah, you’ve had your heart badly broken. You suffer broken heart right now, yes?”

The woman glanced at Sansa, who felt Arya’s stare burrowing into her, pleading to not give this woman the satisfaction of a correct assumption. Sansa said nothing but dropped her eyes to her lap and crossed her legs. Just like Arya, the fortune teller turned Sansa’s hand to the side and counted the lines, just one.

“You have one true love in your life,” she informed with a smile. “You and this man will face darkness but, if you can get to the light, you will enjoy a life of great happiness together.” The woman’s eyes scanned Sansa’s body. “You will never have career, though.”

Sansa expelled an offended laugh and shifted an incredulous stare to Arya and then back to the woman.

“That’s presumptuous,” she snapped. 

“No, no,” the woman insisted and wagged a finger of her unoccupied hand. “It’s future.”

She continued to stare across the table in an unsettling way that sent Sansa’s skin crawling.

“You will have to make sacrifices for this man,” the woman continued, and her voice deepened. “You drive man away if you become too pushy.”

“Excuse me?” Sansa scoffed with affront that vanquished any eeriness she might’ve felt mere moments ago.

“There’s something else…” The woman gripped Sansa’s hand, but Arya had already stood abruptly, enough that her chair wobbled on its base and nearly toppled over.

“Thank you, but I think we’re good,” Arya said firmly, and Sansa followed suit, only passively aware that the woman still clung to her hand.

She tried to retreat, but the woman yanked her backwards with such violent insistence that Sansa spun around and tumbled into the table and the crystal ball nearly rolled off.

“There’s something sinister following you,” the woman hissed. Her visage darkened, her eyes wide and wild, and she spoke quickly, all the words spilling together. “I saw it the moment you came in. And it’s getting closer. You need to protect yourself before it’s too late.”

Arya intervened and pried Sansa’s hand from the woman’s vise-like grip.

“Listen, lady!” Arya shouted. “You got your money and, if you’re all you’re cracked up to be, you’ll have already predicted that if you don’t let go of my sister, I will burn your polyester tent to the ground. How’s that for seeing the future?”

The woman let go of Sansa’s hand and flew from her chair. Furious, she threw one arm towards the tent’s flap.

“Get out now!” she hollered and dropped her put-on accent in favor of her native Texas twang.

Arya took Sansa’s hand, and they ran from the tent, exploding into the night, breathless and doubled over from laughter.

“Run!” Arya screamed and snatched up Sansa’s hand as the woman, red-faced and puffing, emerged from the tent. “She’s gonna use her magical powers on us!”

“Her thrift store powers!” Sansa erupted with giggles as she and Arya nudged through the hoard and dodged carnival-goers as they sprinted down the row of stalls.

“That bootleg gypsy is gonna get us!” Arya shrieked and drew bewildered stares from the people they whipped past.

In a daze of hilarity and the adrenaline pumping through her veins, Sansa’s head spun from laughter and her heart raced in her chest as she and Arya eased deeper into the carnival. The night had taken on a strange shape and odd darkness, the colors less vibrant and filtered through an ominous fog.

Arya bolted towards a sprawling attraction—the House of Oddities and Horrors—and threw her last bit of cash at the admissions booth. Sansa raced behind Arya who ran into the contorted mouth of a circus clown that functioned as the entry way.

In the darkened corridor, Arya stopped to catch her breath and bent over, her hands settled on her bare knees. They wandered deeper into the corridor lit in a sickly and horrid yellow glow. Rows of wooden shelves housed medical anomalies—body parts suspended in viscous, pus-colored liquid; the skeleton of Siamese twins; rusted safety pins and other objects apparently fetched from someone’s stomach.

Sansa and Arya eased past clusters of people, all gaping with disgust at the objects on display. As they turned a corner, a blast of cool air chilled Sansa’s skin that prickled with goosebumps. The dim lights flickered, and the air smelled musty, like damp concrete and dust. A macabre harpsichord tune blared from speakers, the music flat and dissonant. Lights flashed against ghoulish faces painted on the walls, all manner of phantasmagoria on awful display—demons and monsters, ghouls and damned souls.

Arya slowed her pace and gripped Sansa’s arm. They reached yet another corner with amber light piercing the darkness. The harpsichord subsided and was replaced with more calliope music; god-awful and shrill circus sounds that were warped and twisted. Sansa held Arya’s hand as they turned the corner.

The space was a sepia-toned nightmare with faded blue, yellow, and red circus high-tops painted on the walls. Four clowns of different sizes danced and mimed to the ghastly music, their painted faces smiling wide and heads all turning to Sansa and Arya.

Arya squealed and gasped and clung to Sansa as a vision of her nightmares was brought to life. One of the clowns reached for Arya, his mouth peeled open wide with a yellow-toothed smile and black, beady eyes devoid of humanity.

“No!” Sansa screamed and planted herself between Arya and the clown. She swatted his hand away, but Arya sprinted from the room, away from Sansa who ran after her. Arya’s form zipped and darted around corners.

“Arya, wait!” Sansa shouted and raced behind her sister, who disappeared down another corridor.

Her heart beat frantic in her chest. She turned a corner. The lights pulsed. The horrific music wailed. Louder. It was getting louder. She lost her way and her sister, and Sansa was left in the belly of the maze.

The black walls crept closer. The lights now dimmed, and Sansa hurled forward, exploding through a door and into blinding light. She halted and lifted her hand to shield the white light pouring from the ceiling. Her eyes scanned the walls and a million reflections of herself repeating into infinity. Her arms shot out. She spun around, feeling her way along mirrors at odd angles. The reflection obscured the path to freedom and she pounded against the walls.

Out. She needed out. Her screams for help were met with cackles—clown-like laughter, high-pitched and sinister. They mocked her. She swore they chanted her name as she pounded against the glass that rippled against the force of each hit.

She dashed forward but slammed into a wall. Her name. Someone said her name; soft like a whisper. The sound in this nightmare was distorted. It was right next to her. Another reflection joined the hall of mirrors. Sansa’s eyes snapped to hundreds and thousands of reflections in the mirrors. She backed against the wall and didn’t know which one was real.

The stranger stared at her. His black cowboy hat obscured half his face in a shadow despite the light. It was him, ripped from her nightmare—the same two-toned mustache, the same awful eyes boring into her with knowledge of something horrendous he sheltered in his being. He followed her. He stalked her, both by night and now in waking horror.

“Sansa.”

He said her name and would’ve said it once more, but Sansa screamed and bolted across the room. She didn’t care if she ran headlong into a mirrored wall. By luck alone, she whipped past the stranger and careened through the door she had come through. She followed a pack of carnival-goers, shoving past them as her pulse pounded in her ears.

When she broke free and back into the night, Sansa collapsed to her knees amongst the dirt where Arya waited with Theon and Jeyne. They all gaped at her with congruent looks of horror and concern as Sansa buried her face in her hands.

Each labored breath was a hyperventilated huff. Her lungs burned. Her head swam. Sansa was only blithely aware that Arya had sunk next to her side and held onto her.

Sansa pulled her hands from her face, and her eyes scanned the crowd for the stranger, but he was gone, and some other mayhem took his place. The sheriff and four other officers sprinted towards her and Sansa thought they might stop, but they hauled past her and through the crowd that parted. In the distance, sirens wailed, and the carnival-goers gasped, and something awful traveled on horrified whispers. A woman cried, and the hoard shoved towards the carnival’s exit.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” Theon demanded, whipped up in a tizzy himself as he crouched in front of Sansa. His face was ashen. “Look at me. What happened in there?”

“It’s him,” Sansa managed on a terrified and tremulous breath. “That stranger, he’s back. What’s going on?”

Arya helped Sansa from the ground. Only now did she notice Jeyne had been crying and clung to Theon, unconcerned with prying eyes that were too consumed with terror to care. Theon cleared his throat as the four of them huddled close together.

“We don’t know. Folks are saying someone found a body outside the carnival.” Theon’s eyes darted between them and he spoke in a way Sansa had never heard from him before—all his jovial wit and humor extinguished and replaced with dread. “We need to get out of here. It’s not safe anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading and showing so much love! I truly appreciate it and I’m so happy you all are enjoying this story! I had a total blast with the setting of this chapter. The eerie carnival vibes, the fortune teller, the House of Oddities and Horrors. 
> 
> See you next week for the last chapter of Act II of this story! Then we’ve gotta buckle up for Act III...
> 
> If you’re looking for something to read in the meantime, [ check out my newest SanSan fic, Badlands Howl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26777353/chapters/65321575)
> 
> Much love to you all and please stay safe out there!


	15. Tuesday's Gone

From behind the bar, Sandor eyed the fool who hovered near the jukebox and filled the joint with an unwelcome blast from his teenage past. He’d hoped to never hear _Dream Lover_ (or any other Bobby Darin tune, for that matter) again. It dredged up memories of being a hormone-ravaged kid hanging around the soda shop for girls to notice him.

There wasn’t much he could do about it, so he settled against the back counter and hoped the group of women in the corner had better taste in music. That was a losing proposition if their choice of drinks was anything to go by. One by one, they’d ordered cocktails Sandor had never heard of, probably something they’d tried once in the city.

This wasn’t the city and he wasn’t that kind of bartender. Sandor knew how to pop beer caps and pour shots. His talents behind the bar began and ended there. Sandor had told the women as much, and they settled for whatever shit wine Bronn stocked—generic reds and whites from some no-name vineyard.

Sandor surveyed the bar’s scant activity and might’ve kept up with the news except the newspaper next to him was two years old and gathering dust. He crossed his arms over his chest and noticed now that the moron with shit taste in music had slipped out. He hoped for silence, but one of the women put on some sad piano number and Sandor sent Sansa from the place of prominence in his mind, if only for a little while.

Bronn emerged from the back with a clipboard and peered at Sandor from over his reading glasses.

“Quit moping,” he sniped with dry humor. 

Sandor glanced at Bronn before fixing his gaze to the dart boards in dire need of repair. “Fuck off.”

“I’m your boss,” Bronn warned, but clapped Sandor on the shoulder and reached behind him for a stack of papers.

“You’re right,” Sandor said with a sardonic smirk but remained rooted in place. “Fuck off, boss man.”

Bronn ignored him for now, and it was just as well. Sandor had taken up counting his blessings to pass the time and ease his heartache. He had a decent paying job; a roof over his head that needed fixing, but it kept out the rain; his truck still ran, and he had his freedom. Not too long ago, he would’ve considered that mighty fine living. Only now, the glaring absence in his bed and in his life eclipsed all those blessings combined.

Sandor dropped his eyes with a heaviness he just couldn’t shake and was at a loss for how to drive it out.

Bronn settled next to Sandor and scanned the bar that was damn near dead, but Tuesday nights weren’t known for drawing folk in, not even the steel workers; just the five women in the corner making an awful ruckus and one crying into her beer and blubbering about a broken heart. A rare pang of empathy for a stranger ripped through Sandor.

“How you been coping?” Bronn ventured with rare delicacy.

Sandor considered the question. Poorly was one answer. Like a lovelorn dumbass who was out of his depth and even further out of his mind at missing her was probably a better one.

“With Jack Daniels and Hank Williams,” Sandor offered instead of the messy truth. 

“Two fine gentlemen.” Bronn doled out his consolation—or as close as he was likely to offer—with a chuckle.

“Yeah, well, I’d prefer one fine redhead,” Sandor grumbled and adjusted his Stetson. He stared up at the water-stained ceiling. Not much had changed around here, and he garnered what little comfort from that he could.

“Shit in one hand and wish in the other and see what fills up faster,” Bronn remarked and turned around to the shelves. He counted the liquor bottles and scribbled the number on his clipboard. “If you want her, go get her. Pride didn’t stop you before.”

Sandor smiled softly to himself. On multiple occasions, he had hopped in his truck with pure conviction pulsing in his veins, the urgency to make things right and close the distance between them. He’d even fired up the engine and made it down the street. Though loath to admit it, fear masquerading as pride got the better of him, burning him up and sending him home.

He’d unmasked it, though. It wasn’t about dignity or who should inherit the blame. It was about driving to Devil Creek and turning up on Sansa’s doorstep with too little to say and too late to make it right. The prospect of returning to Cactus empty handed was enough to keep him from leaving in the first place.

“It’s not about pride. I just don’t know how to fix it,” Sandor said to summarize the conflict that raged within. “I wasn’t gonna show up with nothing much to say and sorry doesn’t seem enough. Now that I’ve got the words, I can’t get ahold of her.”

He’d tried her at home to no avail. Yesterday, he’d called the diner during her shift with mild success; she had been working but was busy with customers. The woman on the other end swore she’d have Sansa call him back. He’d waited by the phone all night. No calls. The radio silence said plenty.

“Well, you were never a man of many words, not unless you’re running your mouth.” Bronn cut Sandor a look as he replaced an empty bottle of gin on the shelf. “The thing about women, if you wanna keep them around, you gotta open up. Otherwise, they’ll pry things out of you or give up trying, and both prospects promise pain.”

Sandor stared at Bronn and cracked a smile. “Since when do you know what women want?”

“I don’t,” Bronn rumbled with laughter. “I’m just parroting a bit of Griff’s wisdom.”

“Sounds about right.”

That was one person Sandor had heard plenty from; a litany of advice, sharp enough to cut through the bullshit and pointed enough to pin down the truth. Griff hadn’t spared feelings either.

_“Don’t go looking for trouble where there is none, son. That girl ain’t trouble and you know it, so quit being a stubborn jackass and let her love you.”_

It’d been enough to shake Sandor of the emotional paralysis he’d found himself mired in—knee deep and sinking in the instinct to self-preserve that ran counter to the desire to let her in. Like throwing open the windows and doors of a shuttered old house, the light swept in and resistance drained away. The path was clear, and he was on it.

“First chance I get, I’m going to Devil Creek,” Sandor affirmed, the will and the way galvanizing in him; so much so, he eyed the door with the yearning of a man hellbent on making amends. God himself could try to stop him and Sandor would tell the old bastard to get the fuck out of the way.

Bronn followed his gaze and patted Sandor’s shoulder. “What you do on your own time is up to you.”

Sandor snorted at the subtle remark and read between the lines.

“Don’t get it twisted. I’m a free man. All my time is my own,” he fired back.

Any other job, he’d probably be out on his ass by now and, any other boss, he’d be written up for insubordination. Bronn merely sighed and shook his head but lowered his voice when he spoke again.

“I got paperwork to do, if you know what I mean. Another shipment from Father Bill. You alright to stay out here?”

“You need to quit tangoing with that fucker,” Sandor chided and tipped his head to the vacuous space of empty tables and chairs. “I’m sure I’ll manage the crowd somehow.”

“A goddamn smartass, you are,” Bronn groused and rolled his eyes. “That little blonde in the back has been making eyes at you. Just sayin’.”

Sandor had already noticed; the feel of being watched eliciting the same skin-crawling response whether it was a man out to kill him or woman looking for a good time. Sandor’s eyes flicked to her, and she was already watching, poised to flash a bright smile.

“She can look all she wants. I don’t like blondes.”

“Suit yourself,” Bronn grumbled and disappeared to the back where his office was a mess of old paperwork and other clutter. It was a wonder he ever found his ass from a hole in the ground, let alone ran a business on top of it.

Sandor ran a rag over the bar top to busy himself, though no one had occupied a seat there since the last time he wiped it down. Afterwards, he tidied up the back counter and didn’t know what significance that newspaper held, but something told him he’d be in for a scolding if he threw it away.

Movement in the bar mirror caught his attention. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, but the acrid and overwhelming scent of heavy perfume gave the blonde away. Sandor ignored her with the deluded hope that she might wander back to her pack of friends who giggled in the corner. She didn’t leave. Instead, she cleared her throat with purposeful delicacy and tapped her nails against the bar’s lacquered top.

Sandor turned around slow and folded his arms over his chest. The petite blonde settled on a stool and propped her tits on the bar top. Her red-lipped smile was almost as big as her feathered hair that looked brassy in the dingy light.

“What can I get you?” Sandor asked a little too brusque. She was bound to be a thorn in his side but was still a paying customer.

“I already have a drink,” she cooed and did her best at being coquettish, right down to the little flutter of her lashes and the way she tossed her hair over her shoulder and squeezed her breasts together.

“Okay,” Sandor deadpanned. “Is there a problem with it?”

The girl seemed to bristle, perplexed he wasn’t taking the bait. She glanced to her friends who watched expectantly from the table. She turned to him and tried again, but her smile came forced and something behind her eyes changed—the softness gone and determination replacing it.

“Not exactly,” she said and twirled her hair around her finger. “My girlfriends sent me over here.”

Sandor evaluated her; a gesture she clearly misunderstood and took as a positive sign if her high-pitched giggle was anything to go by. Yet another thing that hadn’t changed in five years—the bar flies all looked the same. Every means of expression was just an exaggeration—laughter too loud; flirtation too forward; disappointment too dramatic. The girl was pretty—he gave her that—but seemed out of place, even amongst her friends. 

“I don’t like riddles,” Sandor warned. “And I don’t like being fucked with. Go on and tell me what you want. I’m busy.”

He wasn’t busy but dunked his rag into a bucket of murky water that’d gone tepid and lost all its soap bubbles.

The girl drew a steady breath and placidly folded her hands, though the look she gave wasn’t as peaceful or composed.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Agitation lined her words and, while Sandor might’ve tossed her some credit for being persistent, he ultimately withheld it because he too was growing irritated.

Sandor shook his head and exhaled a rough laugh as he settled across the bar from her, palms pressed to the edge. He stared at the girl and leaned forward as a mocking smile played on his lips.

Just as he summoned a mouthy statement to send her away, someone else joined them. Though her presence was a mere movement in his periphery, Sandor always knew when Sansa entered the room. Perhaps it was the light she carried with her, the sweet scent of her perfume, the way she moved. He’d ponder the phenomenon some other time.

Frozen where he stood, Sandor stared at Sansa who was paralyzed in her own right. Her blue eyes went wide and shifted between Sandor and the blonde who gaped too, just as stunned because girls like Sansa turned heads wherever they went. And there weren’t many girls in the world like Sansa Stark.

Sandor dropped his eyes and stood up straight. “Shit,” he muttered to himself because he knew how this set-up looked and hoped like hell Sansa understood the smile he’d flashed the blonde was purely derisive.

“That your woman?” the girl asked, but already had her answer. She slipped from the stool when Sandor glanced at her.

“Sure is,” he rasped and tipped his head to her table. “Off you go.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. The girl scurried to the corner where her friends looked mildly devastated on her behalf but seemed to forget quick enough as drunken laughter circled the table.

Sandor turned to Sansa, who exhibited every bit of her usual grace. A gentle smile rested on plush lips that he’d thought of far too often the past few days. If a broken heart had mortally wounded him, the way she looked now was surely the life ending blow.

She wore a dress—simple, strappy, and sapphire blue—that hugged every curve of her body. It fell just above her knees, leaving enough to his imagination that Sandor could do the rest in envisioning her naked. He’d done plenty of that, too. It wasn’t the dress, though. It wasn’t even the way she’d curled her hair and pinned it back at the temples with blue jeweled clips.

Seeing her beautiful face again and so much pouring from her radiant blue eyes left Sandor reeling. Her dark lashes fluttered as she stepped to the bar. Sansa opened her mouth to speak, but the words died on her lips. Sandor ran the rag over the bar top to occupy his hands that slightly trembled. 

“You come here looking like sin to torture me or put me outta my misery?”

He dropped his eyes to focus on his task and hoped for the latter. Misery was a sore understatement to the rare form he’d found himself in.

“I never want to torture you,” Sansa assured. The sweetness of her voice would surely undo him, so he scrubbed the bar top with enough vigor to strip veneer from wood. 

“Yeah? Well, tell that to the last week and a half,” he mumbled and heard Sansa’s dejection in the shaky sigh she gave. 

Sandor tossed the rag aside. He’d have to face the music eventually, and now was probably as good a time as any. He leaned against the edge of the bar and stared at Sansa who looked like a sad porcelain doll, all made up and on the verge of tears.

She gripped her purse and gazed at her manicured nails. “I wouldn’t normally show up unannounced. I tried calling. A couple different times, actually.”

Sandor nodded. That knowledge alone made him feel marginally better, and the tension in his shoulders eased. When he hadn’t heard from her over the weekend, he’d assumed she was still angry, though darker thoughts had drifted in and haunted him in their time apart.

“I’ve been working,” he replied and matched her eyes when she stared at him from beneath her lashes. “Busy trying to get my life sorted. I called you too. Yesterday. Friday. Some girl answered your phone.”

When he leaned forward, Sansa did too. Each did their part to close the distance between them, but she gave more and reached for his hand.

“That was my sister. Are you busy now?” Sansa asked because she was too polite to insist that he leave his post, but Sandor wasn’t foolish enough to think he had a choice; not that he needed one. He’d follow Sansa through hellfire just to be near her now.

“No,” he replied. “Give me a second.”

Sansa nodded and pulled her hand away. Her back straightened as she smoothed down the front of her dress. Sandor started for the hall to Bronn’s office but glanced over his shoulder.

“Try not to get into any catfights while I’m gone,” he japed with a wink and an inconspicuous nod to the blonde in the back corner.

He didn’t linger long enough to gauge Sansa’s reaction. Instead, he strode down the hall to Bronn’s office where the man leaned back in his seat and propped his feet on the desk.

Sandor settled in the doorway, shoulder pressed against the frame and his thumbs hooked on his belt loops. Bronn lifted his eyes over the brim of his glasses balancing on the tip of his nose.

“As it so happens, a certain pretty little redhead found me here and wants to know if I’m busy,” Sandor informed. “I’m not busy, so consider this my break. You’ll have to get your ass behind the bar.” He stood, patted the doorframe, and smirked at Bronn, who appeared wholly unamused. “Boss man.”

“Fuck,” Bronn breathed, ripped his glasses from his face, and tossed them to the disordered papers on his desk. “You are tremendous for shit timing, you know that?” Bronn glanced at his watch. “It’s dead tonight. I was gonna send you home in a half hour anyway. I suppose you can leave now on account of your dream girl turning up.”

While Sandor didn’t think superstitions counted for much, he knew better than to speak too soon.

“Well, if this talk goes south, I’ll be back as a paying customer in need of a drink.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Bronn motioned to the door and the hall beyond. “Get outta here before I change my mind.”

Sandor retreated down the hall just as a sappy love song lilted from the jukebox with a drunk woman clinging to the front of it. When he emerged from the back, Sansa slinked from the stool.

“Let’s go outside,” he grumbled. “There are too many people in here.”

Sansa followed his gaze to the empty bar and exhaled a small laugh, though he wasn’t trying for humor. With one sweep of his arm, he motioned for her to lead the way to the door. The gentlemanly gesture worked double time—rewarding him with one of her pretty smiles and offering the opportunity to admire her ass in that dress as he followed.

Sandor opened the door for her and stepped into the balmy night where a warm breeze kicked up dust from the parking lot. Thick clusters of clouds blotted out the stars, and the moon was nothing more than a gauzy orb filtered through gray wisps.

When they were a respectable distance from the door, Sansa stopped along the side of the building and stepped into a dull sphere of light. Sandor remained in the shadows and leaned against the brick wall. The warmth it’d soaked up during the day seeped into his bare arm.

Sansa stood tall and poised, and something about the way the light fell over her enchanted him. A part of Sandor had hoped that they might reconcile, but the cynical part considered that hope just pride before the fall. And what a tremendous fall it’d be if Sansa came all this way and looking this beautiful just to tell him it was truly over.

She’d had the benefit of the drive up here to find her words but seemed to falter now. Her eyes glistened, and she licked her bottom lip that quivered, but not nearly as bad as the way her voice quaked when she finally spoke.

“I came here because my momma didn’t raise me to be too proud to admit when I’ve done wrong. And the last person I want to do wrong by is you. Everyone’s heart is timed differently. Some are faster. Others are slower. I shouldn’t have pushed for more than you’re willing to give. For that and for leaving you like I did, I’m so sorry, Sandor.”

Tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks and she looked at him as though he held her heart in his hands and she was silently entreating him not to break it.

Sandor didn’t have the same head start on words, and perhaps that was for the best. He might fumble them now—all the things he knew he needed to say and the talking points he’d pulled together in his head—but at least they’d be honest. That was all they needed to be, he realized, so he eased from the wall and joined Sansa in the light.

“I don’t think you’ve got much to be sorry about. I owe you an apology, Sansa. You were right and I shouldn’t have hollered at you the way I did or been tough on you the way I was. I never meant to hurt you and I don’t ever want to again. I’m sorry, little bird.”

Something broke free in him and Sandor gave up the ghost altogether, whatever he’d been holding onto. That outgrown part of him bent the knee. He took her hand and matched her eyes, and the words came in an elegant string, or at least as graceful as he could manage. When he stopped trying for perfection, it all came easier, and he gave those words a voice now.

“I’m a hard man and you’re a gentle-hearted woman. The world needs more light like yours, and I better learn how to cherish it in you. And I will. I’m not complicated. I’m really not. I lived a simple life before everything turned upside down and I plan to return to that. I’d give you the world if it was mine to give, but I don’t have much to my name or the means to put you back up on that golden pedestal you climbed down from.”

“I don’t want that,” Sansa pled with fresh tears and an adamant shake of the head. “I don’t want to be on a pedestal.”

Sandor took her other hand and inched closer, encouraged by the way she peered at him with such soulful eyes.

“I know you don’t need or want a glamorous life, but what I mean is, you deserve so much, and I’ll work hard to be the kind of man you deserve, to provide everything you want or need so you can pursue your dreams.

“Shit, I don’t care what those are! It doesn’t have to be singing if you don’t want it to. If you wanna live a simple life, that’s what we’ll do. If you wanna be the best waitress in the Texas panhandle, I will support you in that. You wanna go to the moon?” Sandor flung his hand towards the sky and his vehemence elicited a laugh from Sansa. He laughed too. 

“I’ll miss you like crazy, but I’ll support you getting there and be here when you come back. Whatever it is, I just want you to be happy and fulfilled and not feel trapped by circumstances or obligations or feel like you gotta take care of everyone else before you take care of yourself. Let me take care of you, darlin’, and you do whatever you want for a change.”

A steady stream of tears barreled down Sansa’s cheeks and she swatted at them with the back of her trembling hand.

“I’m not going to the moon unless you’re coming with me,” she insisted tearfully and with such endearing conviction that Sandor released another quiet laugh. “And the only world I want is the one with you in it. That’s all I need.”

Sandor’s heart strummed a faster rhythm, pounding through his ears as he stared at Sansa and was silenced now with somber bewilderment. A resounding sadness returned to her, and she dropped her eyes to the ground between them.

“I just think about the look you gave me standing there in your towel for God and all his creation to see.” She shook her head as if to clear out unsavory memories and licked at the tears rolling over her lips. “I never want to hurt you and I know I did.”

Sansa regarded Sandor with contrition he’d never encountered before. He could’ve laughed for how sorely misplaced it was; a comical error of the cosmos to give such a warm and kind creature like Sansa Stark that much guilt over a relatively minor transgression.

Sandor didn’t laugh, nor did he smile. He knew the moment she was referring to and remembered the bitter sting. He’d just come to terms with loving her and stubbornly surrendered to the vulnerability that it invoked. Another karmic jape, just as he had clumsily accepted it within himself, the universe saw fit that she’d leave him.

“It’s not…” Sandor started, but the words stuck in his throat. “That’s not what it was.”

Sansa sniffled, gripped Sandor’s hands, and gazed up at him expectantly. Her eyes glistened and voice softened. “What was it?”

He couldn’t look at her. Instead, Sandor surveyed the parking lot behind her like a coward; a stubborn coward. The worst kind there was.

“I…” He cleared his throat that was suddenly raw. It bought him some time. He already had the words. He’d even said it out loud once to himself, but it only stung so he shut up about it and kept the thought where it belonged—buried in a graveyard of unspoken sentiments, never to be heard from again.

Frustration surmounted and threatened to rob the moment of its tenderness, and that beckoned his resolve.

“I just…I fucking love you, alright?” Sandor blurted out with far less grace than a woman like Sansa deserved. He smoothed out the edges and tried again; this time with his voice drawn low and his eyes matched to hers. “I’m so in love with you, Sansa. It’s enough for me that you’d love me too. That’s all I really need besides you. And that’s all I’ll say about that.”

Sandor finished on a whisper and bit his bottom lip. She said nothing and stared at him like a deer in headlights. Brimmed with more tears, her eyes darted across Sandor’s face as if memorizing something, the moment perhaps.

“I love you too,” she cried and regarded him with spell-bound disbelief that left her nearly breathless and bouncing slightly in place as if she were holding herself back from flying into his arms. “More than I think I could ever put into words.”

“You do?” Sandor steadied his gaze on her, searching out any momentary second guessing.

“Of course, I do,” Sansa insisted, as if mildly offended he might believe otherwise. “You’re easy to love.”

Sandor felt his brows fold together as if she were talking about some other man. “No, I’m not,” he corrected on a rasping chuckle.

Sansa eased forward with her pretty features hardening in fierce determination. The look she gave warned that he better listen good and well and not disagree again.

“Yes, you are,” she insisted. “And I love you enough to make up for all the fools who couldn’t or wouldn’t or told you it was too hard.” 

She meant it. In her, Sandor had found a woman who’d spend her days trying to right the wrongs of others, protect him from his past, and ensure the future they shared was full of love he’d never known.

He cracked a smile to dissolve the lump burning in his throat. “Well, then get over here and show me.”

Sandor reached to draw her near, but Sansa was already careening into his arms. When her body met his, he stumbled backwards from the force. Her arms coiled around his neck as she rolled onto the tips of her toes.

“You have both. All of my love and all of me. I’m not going anywhere ever again,” she declared on a quiet breath against his mouth and with heartfelt depth he’d gladly drown in if given the chance.

Sheltered in his arms, Sandor held her soundly and cradled the back of her head, his fingers sunk in her hair. His lips brushed against hers and his tongue swept tenderly into her mouth.

“Let’s get outta here,” Sandor panted when the kiss broke and obliged when Sansa tugged him towards her once more, unwilling to part. “I wanna take you home.”

“And what will we do there?” she asked innocently enough, but her smile teased.

Sandor pulled back enough to admire her wrapped in his arms. “We’ve got more making up to do. I figure it will probably take all night.”

“All night,” Sansa confirmed with a nod and slipped her hand into his. “And we better revisit in the morning, just to be sure.”

“Yes, it’s very important that we be thorough,” Sandor agreed and led her towards the parking lot, hand-in-hand and his world so swiftly put back to rights. 

* * *

A little wine took the edge off. Sansa was a vision standing in front of the record player with the living room lights turned down low. Sandor had put on the sounds of his mourning—those Hank Williams tunes—but recorded over the memories with new ones; like how she looked at him, timid in a way and longing to relish in fresh declarations of love.

He eased her path towards him, handing off the wine and settling on the couch. Sansa sat with her legs draped across his lap. She’d slid out of her heels and sipped from her glass as he rubbed her calves. The conversation was light—how they’d spent their week and a half apart—and they mostly avoided talking about the heartache that left gaping holes of time unaccounted for.

It wasn’t until Sansa’s lips were stained dark pink from the wine and her giggles came more freely that they addressed it head on. The bourbon he drank had loosened his tongue. Sandor set aside his drink and pulled Sansa onto his lap.

“I want you closer,” he murmured against her neck when she obliged and hiked up her skirt to straddle him.

His hands roamed the outside of her thighs, cupped her ass, and smoothed up her back in dawdling motion that inspired her dulcet sigh. One of Sansa’s hands rested on his shoulder and the other tentatively lifted to the scarred side of his face in a willowy touch. She searched his eyes for any resistance, waiting for him to pull away.

He let her touch him there and surveyed the sentiment pouring from her expressive eyes. Sansa couldn’t hide a damn thing in those beautiful blues. As his hands gripped her hips, she studied his face and drew her fingertips over his scars with gentleness no one in memory had ever paid him. The brightness in her surprised him; no morbid curiosity or pitiful sympathy. Sansa regarded him with pure adoration and love that burst at the seams as if she couldn’t tame it.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered and looked as though the tears might start again.

The whole of it left Sandor astonished at his sheer luck and terrified she might flitter away again, so he wrapped her in his arms and rested his cheek against her head as he closed his eyes and breathed her in.

“I missed you too.”

The record player stopped, and they held onto one another, not paying any mind to the blissful silence. “You left your Fleetwood record here,” Sandor eventually said.

Sansa stirred in his arms and settled back on his knees. She glanced at the player and her record on the shelf where she’d left it. She turned to him with a spirited smile.

“Did you listen to it?” she asked and traced one finger over his shirt’s mother-of-pearl buttons. Half of them were undone, revealing his bare chest beneath.

“Tried to.” Sandor nodded and grazed her bare shoulder with his fingertips. “It just made me think of you and wish you were here.”

Sansa smiled, not knowing how she’d swept into his life and wrapped herself around his newfound freedom and, when she was gone again, her absence devastated in ways he hadn’t anticipated. It had left him gutted by the simplest things—the strands of long red hair on his pillow; his white t-shirt she’d slept in that still smelled like her; her favorite record sitting on the shelf.

Sansa leaned forward and circled her arms around his neck. “I’m here now,” she soothed in a prelude to a kiss. Her tongue gently swiped along his bottom lip before slipping into his mouth, and he met the warmth and depth with fiery insistence.

All the wanting her, missing her, craving her gained momentum. The inertia alone might’ve sent him carrying her off to the bedroom, but something told him to savor the moment and let the night have its rhythm. The kiss slowed and Sansa pulled away with her plump lips parted, breaths panting, and cheeks flushed a pretty shade of pink. Sandor reached for his bourbon glass on the side table. He took a sip and contemplated Sansa over the rim.

“You have to answer a question and you can’t lie,” he announced and tipped the glass to her. 

“Oh God,” Sansa laughed and prematurely blushed. She took the bourbon from him and lifted the glass to her lips with a delicate sip before handing it back. “Okay. What is it?”

Sandor set his drink aside and eased back with his hands clasped behind his head. “Were you worried about that blonde girl at the bar?”

“No,” Sansa fibbed endearingly—her cute little nose lifted innocent and indignant, and her lips pursed in a pout.

“I said you can’t lie!” he scolded through a hearty chuckle.

With her arms crossed over her chest, Sansa bit her bottom lip to stifle a smile and, though she tried desperately to cling to her incensed and abject denial, she only gained more winsome allure. Sandor’s hands circled her waist, and he sat up to plant kisses on her cheek.

“You were jealous,” he taunted and tickled her sides. 

“No I wasn’t!” she giggled and writhed on his lap as she clung to his shoulders lest she tumble to the floor.

“You were,” he laughed and stilled his hands but ran his lips along the graceful length of her neck. “Jealous of that blonde girl.”

Sandor sat back again and drew a deep breath that he released on a long, heavy sigh. His hands traced her curves from the swell of her breasts down to the dip of her waist before settling on her hips.

“I wouldn’t have gone home with her if you hadn’t come in,” he murmured with a fading grin as he matched Sansa’s eyes, intent to impart the seriousness of his words. “You know that?”

Her fingers swept through the ends of his hair, and she gave a muted nod. Sansa eased forward, her chest pressed against his and arms wrapped around his neck.

“Once a woman has my heart, that’s it for me,” he whispered. “And you’ve got my heart.”

All along, it seemed, that was all Sansa needed to hear—the simple truth he’d obstinately held onto for pointless reasons. Sansa’s head tilted, her hair tumbling over her shoulder as she drew a dreamy breath and looked at him like he hung the moon for her; would if he could.

“Does that mean I’m it?” she asked with such doe-eyed hopefulness, enraptured and hanging on the words from his mouth.

Sandor leaned forward and captured her lips in a soft kiss. “As a matter of fact, it does.”

She nodded and seemed to reflect on the path that’d brought them here, the twist of fate and near misses that might’ve meant they’d pass like ships in the night, never knowing what could’ve been.

“You’re it for me too,” she affirmed with another beaming smile that took on a faintly mischievous quality. “Now _I_ have a question for _you,_ and you can’t lie.”

“Okay. Let me get ready,” Sandor cracked, snatched up his drink, and took a long sip before turning back to her. “Shoot.”

Sansa traipsed her fingertips along the muscled contours of his bare chest. She bit her bottom lip before tentatively asking, “When my sister said I was out for the night, did you think I was on a date?”

“No,” Sandor answered honestly.

It hadn’t occurred to him; not truly. Worry had been the prevailing sentiment, ruthless and ravaging like a vulture circling carrion. Her safety sent his pride and ego to the backseat, and he had been relieved to know she wasn’t all alone. And if she had been alone, Sandor would have deposited that pride and ego on the side of the road and hauled ass to Devil Creek. 

“Really?” Sansa breathed and toyed with the collar of his shirt.

His hands settled on her waist where he gave a gentle squeeze to urge her to look at him.

“Sansa, you and I both know that what we have is the real thing. I know you’re not the kind of woman to call it all off the first time things get hard.”

“No, I’m not,” she concurred with a solemn nod. “Even if we don’t agree on things, I’m always going to fight for us. You’re worth it; worth all of it. The good times and the hard ones too—I only want them with you.”

“I only want them with you too,” Sandor murmured and watched her lips part.

Sansa nodded distractedly but gazed at his mouth. Aroused by his words perhaps, she kissed him hard and ground against him, testing the waters with a provocative roll of the hips.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Sandor groaned and nipped her bottom lip. “Why don’t you come with me?”

His hands meandered up her thighs and disappeared beneath her dress. His fingers traced the lace edge of her panties and his heartbeat quickened at the thought of the treasure awaiting him underneath.

“I have a better idea,” she tempted on a sultry breath in his ear. “What about a bath instead?”

“A bath?” Sandor repeated incredulously. “You think we’re both gonna fit in a bath? Shit.”

In the end, they did both fit; just barely, and the soapy water had sloshed from the tub as they adjusted to the most comfortable position they could manage—Sandor leaned back with one leg propped against the side of the tub and Sansa settled between his legs with her back against his chest.

The whole thing struck him as tortuous foreplay. The small of Sansa’s back nestled against his cock, hard now with how she shifted against him. She’d crane her neck to look at him and apply just enough pressure between his legs to send tingles up his spine as he quietly mouthed expletives to the ceiling.

Then there was the way her firm, full breasts peeked out of the water whenever she arched her back. Her nipples enticed and Sandor couldn’t help but brush the tight, pink buds with the pads of his fingers. One of his hands dipped beneath the water and settled on her stomach.

A song from the record player drifted down the hall and mingled amongst their laughter that echoed in the bathroom. Crammed in a tub with the woman of his dreams, sipping on bourbon and indulging in the feel of her body against his and the sweet sound of her voice, Sandor searched his memories for happiness that matched this moment; a means to compare, but there was none. A bright burst of joy like he’d never known—the kind of exuberance that comes with a future full of possibilities—overcame him.

“I’m gonna marry you one of these days, you know that?” Sandor declared, blissfully unburdened by doubts that might’ve warned him to keep this bit of information to himself.

He closed his eyes with a contented smile but opened them again as the water shifted around him. Sansa had twisted enough to gaze up at him. Beads of condensation clung to her skin and imparted an iridescence that only amplified the way she beamed with sheer delight.

“You’re not supposed to tell me that!” she laughed and kissed his cheek. “It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

“It will be a surprise. I’ll ask you when you least expect it,” Sandor said, but quieted. When Sansa sunk against him again, he interlaced his fingers in hers, one hand beneath the water and the other resting against her chest.

“Maybe I’ll ask you right now,” he tossed out as a self-indulgent afterthought.

“Don’t you have to get a ring?” she asked plainly, but he heard the way her breath hitched.

Sandor exhaled a laugh. “What makes you think I haven’t?”

Sansa abruptly sat up and turned to him in elated disbelief as the water sloshed around her. “Sandor Clegane, if you’re teasing me…”

She splashed him, and Sandor’s rumbling laughter filled the bathroom as he gathered her back into his arms. She nuzzled against him and gripped his forearm draped across her chest. They quieted, each considering the notion. Sandor lifted her left hand and the pad of his thumb traced her ring finger.

“I could ask you now,” he rasped, his lips brushing against her ear. “My mother’s engagement ring is sitting in my dresser drawer. My brother wasn’t the marrying kind, and now he’s right where he belongs.”

“That leaves you,” Sansa observed and let the suggestion hang in the air where Sandor picked it up again.

“That leaves me.” He pressed a kiss to her temple, her skin warm and damp from steam. Sandor let go of her hand and held her in his arms again as she settled against his chest to listen.

“I never imagined I would ever need it. I figured by the time I served my sentence, I would’ve already lost my best years; a forty-year-old man, an entire decade of my life wiped out, trying to rebuild from the ashes with not much to offer a woman.”

Now would’ve been the time to count his blessings again, but the most important one was tucked in his arms—safe, sound, and all his. Sandor leaned against the side of the tub and Sansa pulled the other way so they could gaze at one another.

“I never thought I’d find you,” he confessed and lifted a hand to her cheek. “I hoped you existed somewhere. I didn’t know, of course, what you’d look like or what your name would be or how we’d cross paths. But I thought of you—those times I was sweeping through the jungle in Vietnam and listening to rain pattering a tin roof in a foreign land; when I was behind bars with nothing but time to dream you up. And here you are.”

_I’m lucky._ Sandor had been realizing it since he met her, but never like this; the totality of what she meant to him or the years of his life he spent constructing the vision of a woman he hoped to love one day. Perhaps it was too much to look at all at once and, with the tremendous blessing, came the cumbersome fear of having it taken away.

He pushed that all aside as Sansa closed her eyes and turned her head to kiss his palm. 

“I wished for you too,” she sighed. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted. More than I ever could’ve dreamed of.”

She shifted back in place as both his hands disappeared beneath the water and smoothed down her stomach. With her head resting against his shoulder, Sansa slowly arched her back and eased against his cock.

“You’re doing that on purpose,” he moaned and slid his middle finger between her folds, delicately brushing her clit and soaking in the sounds she made and the way she melted against him.

“Of course, I am,” Sansa admitted on a shaky sigh, about time she departed with her claim to wide-eyed innocence and embrace her scandalous side.

“Alright, bath time is over.”

Sandor sat up unceremoniously and sent Sansa up with him. He reached for a towel sitting on the floor and tossed it to her when Sansa climbed out of the tub. He popped the drain and didn’t bother drying off as he followed Sansa into the bedroom. In front of the bed, she flashed a luscious smile over her shoulder and let the towel fall to the floor.

Sansa turned around as Sandor approached and the sight of her in the gauzy light slowed his steps and, with each one, he leisurely stroked himself. His eyes roamed the smooth expanse of her long legs and he watched as she reached with slender fingers to touch herself.

Her eyes, dark with lust, devoured him too, and her head fell back, exposing the length of her neck as she bit her bottom lip. Sansa’s chest rose and fell with each shuddering breath and an unbidden grunt issued from Sandor’s throat.

He reached out and grabbed Sansa by the waist with one hand. The other cupped her breast; a perfect handful, shapely and pert. With his thick manhood pressed against her belly, Sandor traced the tip of his tongue along her collarbone and up her neck with a light lick. He collected a sigh from her lips and delved his tongue into her mouth in an impassioned kiss.

“On all fours,” he commanded on a quiet, deep breath and grinned as Sansa obeyed with dutiful dedication; anything to please.

She climbed onto the center of the bed and gazed over her shoulder as she bent over. Her legs slowly sunk apart and, by now, she was well-versed in wielding the power she knew she had over him. He’d fuck her senseless until she screamed his name and begged for more, but she’d mastered her own seduction. Where his was rough and insistent with the full might of masculinity, hers was tender and slow, aching in ecstasy.

The heat of the room moved through Sandor as he watched her legs spread for him. Her perfect pink lower lips were glistening and wet and his for the taking. Sandor’s pulse quickened and mouth fell open as if she were revealing herself to him for the first time. Under some kind of spell, he almost forgot himself until she expelled a breathy laugh.

He strode to the edge of the bed and grabbed her hips to yank her backwards. Sansa let out a faint squeak that dissolved into a gorgeous moan as Sandor guided the tip of his cock to sweep against her folds and brush her clit. He circled her entrance begging to be fucked and, though Sansa wasn’t too proud to beg for it, she took charge now and thrust herself backwards to take him inside.

Sandor’s hand at her backside stilled her movements and her head whipped over her shoulder with a pout as he backed away slightly. He bent over her, letting the damp ends of his hair trail along her back in a feather-light sweep. Sansa’s eyes fluttered shut at the sensation. His lips grazed her spine as he muttered against her skin.

“I promised you something and I intend to make good on it.” His finger swiped between her wet folds and dipped inside her with a dawdling stroke.

“You’ll have to remind me,” Sansa panted as she arched into his touch.

Sandor chuckled, not quite at her expense but at his fortune that she’d forgotten or perhaps never even anticipated what was to come. He dropped to his knees and held her firmly by the front of her thighs but tugged her backwards until his face was buried between her legs.

Sandor licked her from behind, his tongue swirling over her clit with no pretense meant to tease. Instead, he followed the sounds she made—moans and whimpers—straight for the prize with relentless swipes and practiced precision at what he knew drove her wild.

She writhed and wriggled, damn near riding his face and coming quicker than he intended. Sansa collapsed to her forearms, mumbling and panting and swiveling her head to gaze at him with cheeks flushed and eyes heavy lidded. He knew the look she gave. She wanted him and gracelessly reached to pull him onto the bed.

Sandor matched her eyes and shook his head with a devilish smile. He kissed the bottom side of her ass cheek where it met her leg and ran his tongue across. With a quick lick between her folds, Sansa released a weighty sigh—part anticipation and part frustration because he knew she wanted him to bury himself inside of her. But when his tongue traveled further than it’d ever been, straying from her soaking warmth and up to the pink bud of her asshole, Sansa let out a sharp gasp and tried to writhe away.

With his hands gripping her legs, she didn’t get very far. His tongue circled the spot with a delicacy that must’ve surprised her. She stilled. Even her pants softened as if she was holding her breath and waiting, measuring the sensations that seemed to both tantalize and confuse her.

“If you don’t like it, I’ll stop,” he breathed between gentle licks, worshiping her in ways he hadn’t with many other women, and she must’ve known. The tension in her body fled, and she released one long, shaky exhale and the sweetest moan. 

Sandor swiped again with the tip of his tongue applying some pressure. He trailed his thumb between her drenched lower lips and circled her clit.

“Don’t stop!” Sansa cried as if her mouth finally caught up to her mind, paralyzed by the new sensations rolling through her body and moaning in a way he’d never heard from her before.

The taste, the touch, the act alone encouraged him further. Sandor tugged her closer to him and savored every bit of her, his tongue and thumb colluding in synchronous and deliberate rhythm. Once again, Sandor lost himself, his own moans joining her sweet choir and the way she panted and squealed and begged for him to make her come again.

When she came, she came hard and wild, hair tossed back and with no concern for the way she cried out, and the sudden flush dripping down the insides of her thighs. And because he couldn’t help himself, Sandor let her collapse to the mattress as a blubbering mess unconcerned with how he turned her over, tossed her legs over his shoulders, and buried his tongue between her legs all over again. He stopped when she patted his shoulder with an exhausted sigh.

“Please. Sandor, I want you inside of me,” she pleaded.

With a wicked smile and her pleasure running down his chin, Sandor wiped his face with his palm and climbed on top of her, easing down with her trembling legs straddling his hips. He brushed away the hair that stuck to her cheeks that were damp with sweat.

“You liked that, didn’t you?” he murmured against her lips and didn’t wait for an answer before he kissed her hard and deep. His cock nestled between her soaked folds and glided between them in slow thrusts. He trailed kisses down her cheek, neck, and to her breasts. With an embarrassed blush, Sansa released a breathy giggle into her palms pressed to her face.

“Yes,” she admitted, but quieted now. “I loved it.”

Her arms circled his neck, and she gazed up at him in yet another way she hadn’t before. Just when he thought he knew all the ways Sansa might look at him, she’d find another, and it left him enthralled and touched at the selfless love and adoration she’d been giving him.

And he’d give it right back to her, along with anything else she ever wanted. With that tender thought, he pressed a light kiss to each of her cheeks, the tip of her nose, and the sweetness of her lips. His mouth hovered over hers, capturing the splendid and comforted sigh she released as he finally slid inside of her.

In what felt like quiet sanctity between them, Sandor stilled for a moment and relished the feel of his cock inside her, her breasts pressed against his chest, her plump lips brushing against his in a lush kiss filled with intimacy and the release of pent-up longing.

He knew what she needed now, and it was what he needed too. He thrust in languid movements and felt himself soaring with pleasure he’d never known. And it wasn’t as if they hadn’t made love this way before—heart-to-heart and nose-to-nose, alternating between gazing at one another in sheer astonishment and rejoicing with urgent kisses and pulling the other close.

The language of their lovemaking ascended to new heights and gained new knowledge of the other; something sacred existing between them, and it didn’t have to be spoken. Fool for her that he was, Sandor tried anyway, but ‘I love you’ didn’t seem hardly enough.

“You’re all I’ll ever need,” was all he managed, and it was enough. He slipped his hand in hers, interlacing their fingers as they rocked together.

“I’ll always be yours,” Sansa whispered back with a doting smile. She freed one hand from his and combed her fingers through his hair.

Sandor held onto her, capturing each of her moans with his lips to her mouth. He felt her tightening around his shaft as he picked up the rhythm and it wasn’t just the sheer ecstasy he chased, that blinding moment he swore he saw God himself. He followed the feeling—the way she held him tight against her; the look she gave; the whispers that she wanted him always.

High off of the trust they’d built and the love that they shared, Sansa and Sandor rode to their climax together. Delirious, his mouth crushed against hers with a muffled grunt and, when he pulled away, Sandor almost forgot himself altogether until Sansa’s frantic tapping at his shoulder brought him to his senses. He pulled out just as his seed spilled over her belly.

With a loving kiss to her lips and then her forehead, Sandor collapsed to the mattress next to Sansa, his limbs nearly numb and body thrumming in the dizzying aftershock of pleasure. Sansa pecked his cheek and cleaned up in the bathroom before joining him in bed again.

Beneath the covers and with the lights out, he held her against his chest. In the darkness, they conjured up their future together and all the places they hoped it might take them. Another show of intimacy—Sandor had never allowed himself this luxury before. He’d purposefully left his future unwritten for most of his life until, much to his horror, it’d been decided for him for far too long. Now it was his to decide, and he’d decided that Sansa belonged in it.

After a while, another storm brewed somewhere in the distance and lightning flashed outside. When the thunder eventually accompanied it, Sandor closed his eyes and tried to steady his breaths. He felt Sansa tense against him as the rain lashed the window.

Sansa stirred and Sandor opened his eyes to find her propped on her elbow. Her silhouetted form gazed down at him in the darkness.

“Are you okay?” she whispered and stroked his cheek, a loving touch so obviously meant to soothe what they both knew was coming.

Sandor focused on the warmth of her hand against his skin, the floral scent of her hair falling over her bare shoulder, and the comforting sound of her voice when she spoke again.

“You never have to tell me things you don’t want to,” she assured, and he realized now she was navigating this part of him with haphazard grace, not quite knowing the shape of the monster he dealt with. In truth, neither did he.

Sandor turned to his side, and Sansa followed suit as she laid back down. As they faced one another, he gathered up her hands and held them in the small space between them. 

“It’s not about want,” he said and, with his eyes adjusted to the dark, discerned the features of her face. With another bolt of lightning, he saw the worry in her eyes. “Sometimes I don’t know how. It’s easier just to move around it instead of trudging through the middle, and I don’t always know how to put it all into words. It’s overwhelming. But for you, I’ll always try.”

Sansa scooted towards him and kissed each of his knuckles. “And I’ll always listen.”

When another rumble of thunder rattled the window, Sandor inched closer to her and closed more of the distance between them.

“Can I tell you something?” he whispered.

“You can tell me anything you want,” Sansa replied with an eager nod and a gaze that gently encouraged his confession. She stroked his arm and the touch alone eased the path for him to speak.

“Those pictures you sent me with your letters. You know what I did with them?”

“I can think of at least one thing,” Sansa laughed, and Sandor remembered now he’d hinted at the lewd acts he’d committed with her photos. 

“Well, yeah,” he conceded with a chortle. “That was a given, you had to’ve known.”

The storm neared, and Sandor focused on the feel of her fingertips against his skin, her hair mussed up some from lovemaking, her soulful eyes. Their legs entwined beneath the covers, all tangled up in one another just like they were always meant to be.

“The nights I knew the nightmares were waiting for me when I closed my eyes, I used to look at the pictures you sent. I’d study your gorgeous face, beautiful legs, everything about you until I forgot what I was afraid of. Some nights you were the only saving grace, Sansa. When you were here to see it, I didn’t know what to do. It felt crippling and impossible. I guess I should’ve just held onto you.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth, Sansa curled up against his side and Sandor rolled to his back. She draped one arm across his chest and her head rested in the crook of his shoulder.

“You can always hold onto me,” she whispered like a vow, though she was the one holding on, squeezing him tight as if to protect him from the storm and the nightmares it conjured in him.

The storm raged on and Sandor held onto her, putting off sleep as long as he could. Sansa laid awake with him through it all and hummed a quiet tune that gave way to a sweet song she sang to him. He listened to the sound, the ethereal beauty of her voice, and asked for another. She indulged him until the storm passed. When sleep finally took hold, the dreams Sandor had didn’t haunt or torment. Instead, he dreamed of Sansa and the future they’d build together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I really hope you enjoyed! Feel free to leave your thoughts. I love hearing what you all think! 
> 
> This chapter is the end of act II of this story (ch. 9-15). While the tempo was slower, I planted a lot of seeds during these chapters that become important later and laid the ground for the rest of this story. Thank you for hanging in there with me! I appreciate it so much! 
> 
> A few silly headcanons I have for this story and I don’t have anywhere to put them, so I guess I’ll share them here…
> 
> 1\. Sandor is not winning any bartender of the year awards any time soon! Not because he can’t figure out how to make a drink, but the whole idea of stellar customer service for tips and being that bartender people can bullshit with is entirely lost on him. Most of the patrons don’t really care, but God forbid someone come in asking for a cocktail that requires muddling…
> 
> 2\. Fleetwood Mac’s "Rumours" was released in early ‘77. Sansa has not stopped listening to it since. Arya, Jeyne, Theon...they all had to suffer through her effusiveness about this record and her deep musings about the meaning of each song. “Dreams” and “Songbird” are her favorites and “Gold Dust Woman” hits a little too close to home. She’ll probably buy a copy to have at home and leave one at Sandor’s place.


	16. Gimme Shelter

“I don’t like it,” Sandor protested and held onto Sansa in his driveway. “I just don’t like it one bit.”

He rested against the side of his truck, but his body tensed up like a spring. The muscles of his arms rippled beneath tanned skin and his jaw set firm as if to stymie the rest of his objections.

“I know. I don’t like it either,” Sansa soothed and brushed the hair from his cheek. Still partially damp from the shower, he wore it loose around his shoulders. “It’s only one night.”

The breeze picked up around them and the air was electric as more storms brewed. Sandor grasped her hips as if unwilling to let go. His eyes scrutinized angry black clouds that filled the sky and steadily crowded out pristine blue.

In the elation of reconciliation, Sansa had stuffed away the story of the carnival. It felt like hiding a monster under the bed. She knew it was there. It taunted her through the night and worry ravaged the bliss of falling asleep in Sandor’s arms. So, Sansa did what she did best—whipped up a breakfast fit for a king this morning, took his hand with loving grace, and calmly relayed all that’d transpired. Arya might’ve accused her of sugar coating again, but Sandor hadn’t accused her of anything.

With placid reassurance that she was just fine, Sansa told him about the stranger turning up again and following her into the house of horrors. She hadn’t seen the man since. Neither had anyone else, but folk had stopped caring about the mysterious stranger. The talk of Devil Creek was the body that’d been found—the one the sheriff refused to talk about and the one that hadn’t been publicly identified. The unusual secrecy stunned and stripped the already threadbare nerves of a town on edge. 

At the news, Sandor had dropped his fork to the plate, cleared his throat, sipped his coffee, and retreated into deep thoughts that he finally shared after an awful bout of silence. It was simply untenable and unacceptable for them to live apart, he’d said, but had been quick to clarify that the frustration swiftly overcoming him wasn’t directed at Sansa, only the helplessness at being away from her.

Though Sandor insisted she had nothing to feel guilty about, Sansa assuaged her conscience with another round of lovemaking after breakfast. He’d pleasured her endlessly last night, showering her with affection she couldn’t have conjured even from her wildest fantasies, which apparently weren’t all that wild.

Sansa returned the favor with just as much eagerness to please—dropping to her knees and taking him in her mouth, letting him have her any which way he wanted. This morning that meant riding him with slow and leisurely rolls of the hips as he laid back and enjoyed the view. Sandor had once told her she was a good woman. This morning, Sansa had been hellbent on defining new meaning to that badge of honor.

They’d spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon luxuriating in all the ways to rediscover one another—tender and emotionally rife; wild with unbridled passion; quiet reverie with whispered affections. It’d left Sansa sated and drifting back into sleep with him until Sandor had to shower for work. The real world once again shattered the illusion of endless consumption of one another.

Sandor’s mouth twitched as he cast an uneasy glance to the empty street. Last night’s storm brought down branches, twigs, and even some large tree limbs, all which littered the sidewalk and driveways.

“I can drive up after my shift. If it’s slow tonight, I’ll get off at eleven.”

His suggestion came with heavy pleading behind his gray eyes as he stared at her. Sansa considered the thought to put him at ease and quell the disquiet whipping him close to a frenzy. She shook her head and pressed her palms to his chest. Sandor clasped his hands together behind the small of her back.

“I don’t want you to drive in the middle of the night. It’s not safe,” she countered gently and hoped he’d agree, though Sansa sensed danger wouldn’t stop him.

Sandor fell silent at her subtle entreatment to yield to reason. It seemed an odd reversal—a man of logic and pragmatism, but Sansa had never seen him so unnerved by nebulous instinct. She gripped the fabric of his blue-plaid button up and searched his eyes.

“Why’re you so quiet? You normally have plenty to say on these matters.”

Sansa rolled to her toes and placed a soft kiss to his lips. When she settled back to gaze up at him, Sandor held her tighter against his chest. She’d meant to soothe his nerves, but all she’d really done was recast them as somber resignation.

Shadows crept around them as the clouds overcame the sun now and blotted out the light that filtered through in a grotesque and faintly green haze.

“Why don’t you stay at Jeyne’s tonight?” Sandor tried again because he was nothing if not persistent, even in troubled times.

A smile broke across Sansa’s lips and she lifted one brow. “She’s been staying with Theon. She claims it’s entirely platonic.”

Incredulous, Sandor rolled his eyes and shook his head, but grinned at her.

“Oh, I’m sure they’re getting friendly alright; probably as friendly as you and I get.”

“Almost,” Sansa playfully countered. “Our enthusiasm is pretty hard to beat.”

The mirth was only momentary as each of them exhaled a small, quiet burst of laughter. Something ominous invaded again. Sandor dropped his eyes to the space between them, probably to her cleavage spilling from the top of her dress. When she cradled his cheeks in her palms, he returned his gaze to her.

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “Tomorrow will be here before you know it and we’ll have all night and the whole next day together. I’m gonna fix your favorite dinner and lemon cakes too.”

Sandor nodded and her words must’ve settled him enough that the tension in his body fled and he slumped against his truck. His fingertips traced the neckline of her dress and across her breasts in a teasing touch that sent shivers down Sansa’s spine.

“It occurred to me that I haven’t even taken you on a proper date yet,” he remarked with a smirk that lifted the corner of his mouth and danced behind his eyes. “I should remedy that.”

Sandor tugged her closer and dipped his head to capture her lips in a warm, lingering kiss.

“Where will you take me?” Sansa muttered and marveled that the thought had never quite occurred to her either. They’d had a picnic and nights replete with romance that was somehow more meaningful and intimate for the simplicity. Sansa had long ago departed with the grand gestures that used to move her.

“It’s a surprise.” Sandor winked and pushed from the truck. “But first we just gotta get through the night.”

He kissed her again, deep and yearning though she hadn’t even left him yet and wrapped her up in his arms. His mood lifted some, but he hadn’t shed his unease as he held her tight. When he finally let go, Sandor watched Sansa circle around the front of his truck to her own car parked next to it.

“You drive safe,” he said. His forearm rested on the top of the truck and his fingers drummed a nervous rhythm. “Call me at the bar when you get home.”

“I will,” Sansa assured and blew him a kiss. “I love you.”

She reveled in the words issuing from her mouth and rejoiced at their release that’d come so sweet. Sandor seemed to as well. He contemplated her from across the driveway with a look of pure adoration that tamed the worst of his worry.

“I love you too,” he replied and patted the top of his truck before climbing in.

Sansa sunk into the driver’s seat of her car, fired up the engine, and pulled out of the driveway. Sandor followed behind as she wove through his neighborhood and out onto the country road where he turned left, and she turned right. In her rearview mirror, she saw him wave out the window and heard as he honked three times.

Sansa navigated the desolate highway that cut across farmlands like an endless black vein. The wind lashed against her car, nearly sending it off the road once. Halfway home, Sansa turned down the radio and gripped the wheel. She raced against the storm gathering thick as mud and just as dark. In her rearview mirror, the sky had turned an eerie charcoal color and lightning ripped through the mass of clouds steadily marching towards her and threatening to close the distance.

Every mile closer to home, the hollow pit in her stomach grew. She’d ignored it for Sandor’s sake and buried it deep. Only now it’d been resurrected with gnawing insistence. _You just gotta get through the night,_ Sansa soothed when she finally pulled off the highway and headed towards Devil Creek.

By now, rain pelted the windshield in fat drops and Sansa steadily increased the speed of her wipers to keep up with the downpour. She pulled into her driveway just as the skies unleashed a furious torrent. Sansa grabbed her purse and slipped out of her heels to make a run for it. It didn’t matter. As she sprinted through puddles and past the downspout gushing with rainwater, her dress was quickly saturated, and her hair was soaked as she dashed to the door and fumbled with the keys.

Once safely inside, Sansa released a heavy sigh and collapsed against the door. For a moment, she closed her eyes and listened to the rain battering the roof and lashing the windows. Dripping wet and now cold with the blast of air hitting her bare skin, Sansa imagined what the night could be if Sandor were here. He seemed dead set on a proper date, but she could think of nothing sweeter than laying in his arms and making love as the rain pattered the roof. She opened her eyes again to her empty home, dark and cold. _You just gotta get through the night._

Sansa flicked on the living room light and, in the bedroom, peeled out of her wet clothes and into jeans and an old sweater. In the kitchen, she started the tea kettle, leaned against the wall, and plucked the phone from its cradle. She dialed the number Sandor had scribbled down on a piece of scrap paper.

As the line rang, Sansa admired the thick, blocky numbers and how Sandor’s penmanship suited him. Her heart thrummed a lovely beat and fluttering emerged in her belly in anticipation.

“Bronn’s,” his deep, rasping voice drifted through the line. 

“Hi, it’s me,” Sansa cooed and smiled into the phone that she gripped with both hands. “I made it home.”

Her knees wobbled with an onslaught of butterflies. Sansa couldn’t imagine she’d ever stop feeling this way for him—soaring with her head in the clouds and heart singing at the mere sound of his voice.

“My little bird,” he said with doting endearment and an obvious flush of relief carried on a sigh. “Good. Did you lock your doors and windows?”

_Shit._

From her vantage point in the kitchen, Sansa saw the back door was still securely locked but couldn’t say as much when she poked her head around the corner to the front door. The bolt remained unlocked and the door chain hung loose. It’d been a product of her eagerness to peel out of wet clothes. The oversight sent a shiver through her and crept to the back of her mind where her fears waited to be unleashed.

“Yes.” Even the little white lie felt wrong on her lips. She couldn’t say if Sandor knew, but he quieted for a moment and Sansa felt as though all his earlier vexation suddenly manifested on the line. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Sansa pressed and her voice trembled.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Sandor asserted with his own well-intentioned mistruth. “I just…I feel out of sorts. I wish you would’ve called out of work in the morning and stayed with me tonight.”

He’d made the same request earlier today, though it’d come far less pleading, and it hadn’t imparted slow burning dread in Sansa like it was now. She stared out the back door where puddles had already formed like muddy lakes in the backyard and her vegetable garden was overrun with water. That old familiar owl clung to a tree branch bobbing in the wind and peered at her with haunting eyes. _Why do you look at me like that?_ She turned away from it.

“Darling, I couldn’t,” Sansa said and twirled the phone cord around her finger. “I already had to get my shift covered for today.”

“Fine, then I’m coming after work,” he persisted, and Sansa could hear the frenzy building in him again.

“It’d be one thing if it weren’t storming, but I heard on the radio it’s going to be bad tonight. I don’t want you driving so late and through the weather, no less.”

Sandor sighed as he thought it over and relented, but just barely. His protests came as grunts on the other end of the line that ultimately rose with passion and conviction behind them.

“I don’t like you being there all alone. And I don’t like not having you to come home to, sleep next to, wake up to. I just don’t like it at all. It makes me crazy!”

Sansa slumped against the kitchen wall just as the lights flickered with a boom of thunder. She jumped with a startle, her heart in her throat now.

“I don’t like it either,” she sighed and drew a deep breath to calm herself. “We’ll have to figure out a better arrangement. Tomorrow we’ll come up with a plan.”

“I can think of one,” Sandor snorted with defiance and renewed vigor. “You marry me and then we’ll have to sort it out as man and wife.”

“I like that plan,” Sansa beamed into the phone, his words pure poetry to a heart like hers that loved him like it did.

“I should get back to work,” Sandor murmured, though some fondness had returned to his voice. “You gonna think of me tonight?”

“I’m always thinking of you,” Sansa spoke sweetly. “Day, night, doesn’t matter. You’re on my mind.”

“Likewise. I get so distracted sometimes.” Sandor paused and gave a solemn sigh with all his bitterness pouring through at the distance between them. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too, my love. Have a good night.”

Though she tried to infuse her voice with cheeriness, her sendoff sounded thin, sad, and worried even to her own ears, and Sandor muttered his goodbye just as grimly before they both hung up the line.

Sansa sat in the kitchen chair and, in the haunting quiet of the house, decided it was all rather silly to pine away like a lovesick little girl. She laughed at her own expense, picked herself up, and flipped on nearly all the lights to warm the mood, if nothing else. Yet again she’d left her Fleetwood Mac record at Sandor’s, perhaps in some subconscious bid to always leave a part of herself with him. She opted for Dolly Parton instead and passed the time with chores that’d piled up while Arya was in town.

But the uneasiness chased her around the house—creeping up behind as she dusted the living room; existing as a feeling of being watched as she folded the laundry in the bedroom; raising the hair on her arms when she wiped down the bathroom mirror; drawing her eyes out the kitchen window to an empty backyard.

When the record stopped, the house was yet again plunged into a sinister silence that possessed tension and heaviness. Violent bursts of lightning bombarded the black sky and the thunder sounded as if it were intent to split apart the earth. Sansa hummed to herself to calm her nerves as she cobbled together a light dinner of fruit and crackers, but her stomach lurched, and her appetite fled.

The phone let out a shrill cry and Sansa shrieked at the unexpected sound. She dashed to it and held out the unlikely hope that Sandor might be on the other end.

“Hello,” she answered with a sing-song voice, though her breaths were ragged puffs.

“What are you doing?” Arya demanded on the other end. The insistence in her small voice was just as endearing as ever and a welcome reprieve.

“Just having some supper,” Sansa answered as she nibbled a cracker. “What are _you_ doing?”

Pots and pans clanged through the line along with a string of exhaled expletives.

“Same. I’m trying to fix something for Gendry,” Arya groaned, but Sansa still heard the determination bleeding through.

“Since when do you cook?” she laughed.

The answer was simple, and Sansa already knew—since Arya had fallen in love, though the girl was loath to admit it. There were many things Arya had started doing since she met Gendry, ways she’d changed for the better and tempered her wilder proclivities. Perhaps she couldn’t see it in herself. That was the way with love.

“Since he got sick and needs someone to take care of him. I’m trying to make soup and my ambitious ass wanted to do it from scratch like momma did for daddy when he got sick. The problem is _you_ inherited all the kitchen skills. Thanks for leaving none for the rest of us!”

“We all got our fair share! And there’s always the canned stuff,” Sansa offered, and the clatter on Arya’s end ceased.

“That’s the backup plan,” she mumbled distractedly. “So, how did things go with you and Sandor?”

At Arya’s inquiry, Sansa settled in the kitchen chair, poised to gush about her man.

“Well, I stayed with him last night, if that tells you anything.” A slow heat surfaced at Sansa’s cheeks and she couldn’t contain the smile that erupted across her lips.

“I could’ve guessed!” Arya hollered with glee. “You sound so chipper. I mean, you always do, but extra chipper tonight.”

“He makes me so happy,” Sansa confided as the mood in the room slightly lifted, as if dark clouds had dissipated enough for some light to seep through. “I just love him so much. I wanna tell you something, but I don’t wanna jinx it.”

“You’re not gonna jinx it. Just tell me.” 

Sansa quieted. Her head and her heart both indulged in all the possibilities and the hopefulness of a future with him.

“I think he wants to marry me,” she divulged, and the words alone sent her drifting away again, spirit lifting on the breeze and another smile rushing across her lips. “He’s mentioned it twice now.”

“Well, do you wanna marry him?” Arya pressed without hesitation.

“Of course, I do!” Sansa veritably squealed and bounced lightly in her seat. At once, her thoughts ran off with the fantasy that bubbled up in effervescent enchantment. “You know I’ve gone and already started daydreaming about a wedding dress and you would be the maid of honor. And oh! I saw this pretty buttercream cake in a magazine once with white flowers and yellow satin bows that would look just gorgeous for a spring wedding!” 

Sansa caught her breath, but the other end of the line was dead silent. The backdrop of white noise had disappeared too.

“Are you listening to me?” Sansa stilled, but nothing came. “Arya?”

The wind howled outside, and rain pounded the windows. She jabbed the handset tab to reset the line, but the dial tone was gone too. The lights flickered before extinguishing altogether. She hung up the phone and groped through the dark.

“That’s just great,” Sansa groaned as the lights powered on again and brought with it oppressive portent.

With no distractions now, she considered turning on the record player to drown out the storm and her paranoid thoughts, but instinct bid her to keep the silence. She listened for foreign sounds, things that didn’t belong. Her stomach felt sick, nausea growing with each tick of the kitchen clock.

Sansa checked the locks on the doors, drew all the blinds and curtains shut, and turned off the lights in the house, starting with the kitchen, then the living room, and down the hall where she retreated to her bedroom. _You just gotta get through the night._

The mantra no longer soothed. It crawled beneath her skin and resonated like an ominous challenge.

She sat at the center of her bed with her knees pulled to her chest and eyed the bedroom doorway and the darkness in the hall beyond. The wind howled outside, and a deafening boom of thunder nearly sent her heart pounding out of her chest. Sansa’s mouth went dry, and she panted as a shot of adrenaline coursed through her veins.

“It’s just a storm,” she whispered to herself. Desperate for comfort, she reached for the nightstand drawer and pulled out the small box housing Sandor’s letters.

Crossed-legged on her bed, Sansa carefully opened the box. The letters rested unsullied in their envelopes and in the order she’d received them. Sansa retrieved the stack and pushed the box aside. She pulled out the first letter and, once more, admired Sandor’s handwriting and the way he penned her name for the first time.

With a soft smile creasing her lips, she read it and could’ve sworn she received it in another life entirely. It seemed so long ago and as though they’d crossed thousands of miles of space and eons of time together since. She could hear his voice in her head as she read his first letter to her and it came like a distant dream.

On it went. She read each one and lingered over his words that still left her breathless and giddy. By the time she’d finished his most recent letter, Sansa had eased back on the bed and the comfort she’d found lulled her into shallow sleep. It might’ve lasted the night for how exhausted she was, but she woke an hour later when the wind roared outside her window. The storm had only temporarily subsided and now regained its ferocity. Sansa slipped from the bed and retreated to the bathroom for a shower.

She turned on the water, shed her clothes, and waited for the bathroom to fill with steam. In the shower, she relished the warm water rushing over her limbs sore from the tension she’d held there. She washed her hair and trailed soap bubbles over her skin with no mind for the time. When her worries had sufficiently washed down the drain, Sansa turned off the shower and dried off.

With one towel wrapped around her, she wrung out her hair with another and wandered back into the bedroom. Her bare foot landed on something soft that crumpled against the carpet. Sansa halted and a sharp gasp escaped her.

Sandor’s letters were scattered on the floor next to the bed. Frozen in terror, her eyes fell to the one beneath her foot and its pencil markings now smudged. In slow motion, she processed the sight before her. She hadn’t knocked them off the bed herself. She wouldn’t be that careless with something so precious to her.

Her eyes scanned the room for anything else out of the ordinary and landed on the fan whirling on the dresser. That must’ve been it. Of course, it was. There was no other rational explanation for how they ended up on the floor. That should’ve settled it, but Sansa turned slowly to her closet door and clutched the towel to her chest. _What if someone’s in there?_

She remained in petrified paralysis. It was ridiculous, complete madness, but an over-powering sense of being watched fell over her and the energy of the room shifted in a horrifying way.

Sansa drew a deep breath and reached with a trembling hand for the knob. She held her breath and steeled herself. On a silent count of three, Sansa whipped open the closet door. Her eyes darted over her clothes hanging in orderly rows. Nothing. There was nothing, but she couldn’t shake her fear.

Lightning bolted across the sky and thunder exploded through the house. The storm brought with it oddities she couldn’t explain and a horrid feeling that churned at her core. She dropped the towel to the floor and pulled her white nightgown from the closet and slipped it over her head.

From a dresser drawer, she retrieved a pair of cotton underwear and slid them up her legs, but by the time she returned the towels to the bathroom and ran a comb through the damp length of her hair, the fear ran ravage and uncontrolled in her. In the bedroom, she sat on the floor and gathered up Sandor’s letters.

A sudden blast of lightning snuffed out the only light on in the house—the bedside lamp. Terror-stricken, Sansa was plunged into jet black darkness. She settled back on her knees with her pulse pounding a frantic beat. _It’s just the storm._

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Sansa rose on shaky legs from the floor. The lightning cast strange shadows about the room as the wind ripped through the trees. She tip-toed from the bedroom and down the hall. Her fingertips grazed the wall as she went. Her knees quaked, mind raced, and a cold sweat dampened her brow.

The storm raged as she made her way into the kitchen. With quivering hands, she dug through a drawer for matches and a cabinet for a candle. She fumbled with the match, her clumsy hands awkwardly lighting the wick. Rooted where she was, Sansa listened to the horrendous sounds of the unrelenting storm. She closed her eyes. _It’ll be over soon,_ she told herself in dull reassurance that did little to assuage her frantically beating heart or mind that conjured diabolical possibilities.

A creak sounded in the hall. Her eyes snapped open. She waited in terror-stricken silence. Nothing else came. It was only the wind. It battered the house and screamed through the trees. Her mouth filled with saliva as more sickening nausea took hold. _Don’t go down there._

The hairs rose on her arms, the atmosphere charged and menacing. She scrutinized the front door. Locked. No one was here. She would’ve known. She would’ve heard. _You’re being silly._

As the dual instincts waged war inside of her, Sansa took one measured step forward in the darkness with only the candle’s faint glow to guide the way. She took another step. Then another. Another still. When she stepped into the living room, the floorboard creaked beneath her bare foot.

With her eyes steady on the front door, the lightning illuminated the room in irregular bursts and Sansa crept down the hall towards her bedroom. She felt a presence behind her. Her senses dulled at the edges and the fear that took hold consumed with weight that stole the breath from her lips.

It sounded then. The scratch of the vinyl and the lilting of Bobby Darin. _Dream Lover._ Sansa opened her mouth to scream, but only a hoarse gasp escaped her as she hurled around. She didn’t want to look. _No. Please. No._

The music blared and Sansa stared at a shadow in the living room, blacker than black. Alarm bells rang, screaming for her to leave, to move, but the petrified shock took hold. She shrieked and lifted her hand to her mouth. The shadow approached. She dropped the candle; the flame smothered by the time it hit the floor.

The blood-curdling spell was broken. Sansa sprinted down the hall, but the shadow was on her with speed she swore was supernatural. No human could’ve traversed that distance, nor could anything of the earthbound have barreled into her with as much force as it did.

Sansa slammed to the floor. She fought for the breath that’d been knocked out of her. Her chest exploded with pain and her limbs flailed. Her knees collided into the solid mass on top of her. With a gloved hand, it covered her mouth filled with the iron bite of blood. She didn’t register the sound she heard; feral and howling, but the burning in her lungs said it was her own screaming. Sansa swung her arms that felt like dead weight in deep water, slow and landing in dull blows that did nothing to stave off the attack.

Its hands coiled around her throat and squeezed. Sansa flailed with everything she had, throwing her weight to one side and then the other, but the inertia had no impact. It gripped hard, crushing her windpipe, its weight pinning her to the floor. Her head slammed against the carpet, once and then twice until her vision faded.

Her limbs went weightless, as though she was floating out of her body until all the sensations vanished. Sansa wasn’t sure how long she drifted in the void; long enough that she’d been carried to the bedroom and placed on the bed. Her eyes cracked open to the hazy yellow light of the bedside lamp that looked garish now. Her mouth had gone bone dry with a rag stuffed in it and tied tight at the back of her head. The fabric tasted of dirt and sweat, and Sansa gagged, but only a dry heave came.

She tried to move but couldn’t roll over with how her hands and ankles had been hogtied behind her back and she’d been dumped on her side. The pain set in next. Her head throbbed with sharp stabs. Her throat ached and she could still feel the phantom sensation of a hand crushing her windpipe.

Moments later, she registered the tears saturating her cheeks—tears of regret, terror, and sadness. While the storm calmed outside, another storm began inside of her. Some deluded part of her being, self-preservation perhaps, consoled that maybe this was it. Whoever it was had come to scare her. They’d leave her here like this for Sandor to find her in the morning.

_Sandor._

His name blazing across her mind elicited fresh tears and, with it, the resounding knowledge that this was only just the beginning. Sansa gyrated wildly to scoot to the edge of the bed but halted as the same ghastly presence filled the room, blotting out the light as it stood and hovered somewhere behind her.

She closed her eyes and prayed this was all just a nightmare. She’d wake up in the morning and tell Sandor all about it. It wasn’t, though, she knew. Heavy footsteps slowly rounded the bed. _Be strong. Get through this._

The reassurance once again fell flat. Sansa tried to regulate her breaths, but the frenetic rhythm they’d taken on left her lightheaded. The presence now loomed over her. She could hear it breathing and, when it leaned forward, felt the warm, humid bursts of its breath against her skin. She didn’t want to open her eyes. Maybe it’d go away.

It didn’t leave. Instead, Sansa sensed it crouching down next to the bed. She didn’t want to look. Her instincts screamed not to, but Sansa had to know who was staring back at her. The stranger, perhaps; he’d waxed and waned in and out of her life the past few months, conjured back whenever Sansa felt safety and normalcy finally returning to her.

She cracked her eyes open. Her heart nearly stopped, and the horrified gasp that escaped her hardly sounded her own. The form wore a black stocking over its face that left nothing exposed. Its head cocked to the side as if mocking her and its build suggested it was a man of average size.

The primal calm that’d come over him now was far more worthy of her terror than some crazed maniac. He remained in a squatted position next to the bed with the same placid satisfaction of a predator that’d caught its prey. The record player wailed, a 45 on repeat with the same sappy love song that existed in sickening contrast to this nightmare. Salty tears rolled down Sansa’s cheeks as the man stood.

She squealed and writhed on the bed, but all her tremendous effort got her nowhere. He froze and slowly shook his head in warning. Something had changed in the man. He’d sunk to new evils, she knew, and he’d done unspeakable things. The way he carried himself, the darkness that surrounded him, it all coalesced into a hellish presence in her bedroom.

She screamed, hard enough that she felt she might explode. It came muffled and terminated in a defeated sob. No one could hear her. No one was coming.

He paced to the other side of the bed and unzipped a bag. With her back to him, Sansa heard him rifling through it. Metal clanged against metal and, when he found what he was looking for, the man circled back around with a horrible scraping sound accompanying each step. More tears wet her cheeks, and she tried to beg, but her pleas were incoherent.

He stood over her again and she saw now the origin of that heinous sound. The man sharpened the blade of a butcher knife and, from behind the stocking, stared at her as he drew the blade over the sharpening rod, one agonizingly slow pass after another. When he finished, he set the sharpener to the bedside table. Sansa stilled. Her own sense of calm took over, a will to survive. _You just gotta get through the night._

The words took on a sorrowful meaning as the prospect slipped through her fingers. With focus that would soon fade, Sansa’s eyes darted around the room, searching with wild hope for something, anything.

The gun.

Her daddy’s shot gun still sat propped in the corner and loaded. The man climbed on the bed and Sansa squeezed her eyes shut to conceal her thoughts lest he follow her gaze to the corner.

She contorted her body in violent movements to get away; anything to put distance between them and in a desperate bid to escape. She screamed into her gag with fresh tears barreling down her cheeks.

He roughly shoved her to her stomach and climbed on top. His weight crushed against her back and each sobbing breath from Sansa was harder won than the last. She felt the cold kiss of the blade against her throat. He leaned forward until his face pressed against her cheek and she felt his humid breath seeping through the stocking.

All her dreams and the future she planned to curate with Sandor flooded her mind in a deluge of what could’ve been. With an odd pain in her chest, perhaps her heart tearing apart, Sansa released a muffled cry and opened her eyes.

The man lifted from her and began sawing through her binds. Sansa’s mind clambered for a reason. Surely, this wasn’t mercy and she wasn’t so far down the path of delusion that she’d cling to that hope. With her cheek to the pillow, Sansa shot a frantic glance towards the shotgun once more. Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted as her binds broke free and she felt his hand smooth up the back of her thigh.

The disturbing calm had departed him. The deranged and violent promise revealed itself as he flipped her over. A frenzy had begun in him and delighted in all the ways he meant to defile her with fiendish desecration of another human being.

_No. Not this._

She didn’t think. And perhaps that was her blessing. Fueled by fear and absolute rage at what he meant to do to her, Sansa rolled to the edge of the bed so violently that she sent the man toppling off of her in apparent confusion. It bought her enough time that, when Sansa hit the floor on her hands and knees, she quickly gained her feet and scrambled to the corner.

A furious growl issued from the man, demonic in its tone and the fury behind it. Sansa snatched up the shotgun, pumped it, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing.

The weapon jammed.

Her heart might as well have plummeted through the floor. The man paced to her with the knife drawn and released a sinister laugh but revealed himself with it. She knew that laugh. She knew him.

Sansa wielded the jammed shotgun like a baseball bat as she eased towards the door, ready to put up the fight of her life, even if it meant losing it in the end.

If this was it, she prayed that Sandor be spared in the morning. All she’d wanted was to make it through the night, but if that wasn’t meant to be, she’d go down trying and hope he’d be proud.

_I will get through this night._

Sansa sent the thought towards the heavens, more of a command than a prayer, as the man hurled himself at her once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comfort, my dear reader, will always be more important to me than spoilers. I’m here to say—Sansa Stark has never and will never be sexually assaulted in ANY of my stories. That is a bright red line for me as a writer that I will never cross. This isn’t a knock on writers who tackle that subject matter. It’s simply me knowing my boundaries and what content I refuse to engage with. Anyway, all that to say—this creeper will not lay even one sleazy finger on our girl! 
> 
> Another announcement--I added a chapter to this story. As I was editing, I realized I needed a bit more space to tell the last part, so you’ll have one more Tuesday’s Gone Tuesday!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and for all the kindness, love, and support! It truly means a lot and I hope you all are staying safe out there!


	17. Midnight Rider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Mild depictions of violence.

The old crusty bastard at the end of the bar still groused with Bronn. The offense worth raising holy hell about—Sandor had served him a vodka martini instead of gin. It hadn’t been dirty enough either.

Then there was Sandor’s response to the complaint. He’d slammed a jar of olive juice on the bar, tossed the fucker a straw, and told him to have at it. The man had look poised to die of heart failure on the spot with his red face puffing and a vein bulging at his temple. Bronn had intervened then, probably for the best. Sandor had caused heaps of trouble in this joint before and wasn’t looking to relive that part of his past.

The old man stormed out, threatening to patronize another watering hole. Sandor chortled at that. This was the only bar in town.

“What the hell has gotten into you tonight?” Bronn asked on a low and deliberate grumble, equal parts irritated and concerned.

“Drop it,” Sandor warned, no real answer to give.

Bronn threw his hands up in resignation and retreated to his office, and Sandor resumed the increasingly futile effort to busy his hands as a proxy for a mind that just wouldn’t quit.

_“_ _I’ll miss you too, my love. Have a good night.”_

He couldn’t shake what existed beneath his conversation with Sansa. Such sweet longing had lilted through the line and the reluctance suffusing the call had run deeper than just missing one another. Sandor had almost launched into more protests, maybe even some demands, but he’d faltered to capture in words the feeling besieging his core and coming like a call of peril. He wished he’d tried.

Sandor had said nothing; only a grumbled parting word before hanging up the phone. With his hands on his hips, he stared at his reflection in the mirror behind the liquor shelves. His countenance was normally shaded with stony reserve or crimson anger and ran the muted colors in between, but the man staring back at him was troubled in a way Sandor hardly recognized in himself.

He turned from the mirror and put his hands to work. He organized the beer glasses beneath the bar and wiped free sticky residue with a rag, but his turbulent thoughts raged beneath a calm facade.

He and Sansa had spent nights apart before; multiple in a row. There’d been months where he thought of her in his prison cell and the prospect of sharing her bed was nothing more than a pipe dream. This was different. It felt too much like reckless separation, but the sinister underbelly hadn’t yet revealed itself.

Throughout the night, the bone-tired shift workers drifted in and lined the bar. They’d rub their eyes with the heels of their hands and order the cheapest beer on tap. A few tried to make light conversation but must’ve thought the better of it when Sandor responded with distracted hums or exhaled laughs at statements not meant to garner humor. Those men eventually wandered off and Sandor thought it was just as well.

The brick building withstood the storm that damn near threatened to tear it off the foundation. The lights flickered and the neon beer signs gave a little buzz that irritated Sandor to no end. With a howling gust of wind, the bar door ripped open and flapped on its hinges. The rain poured in along with the wail of a tornado siren. The merry chatter extinguished, and two men sprinted over and slammed the door shut.

As if in suspended animation, the bar’s activity ceased, and solemn dread swept in with the rain. The patrons all stared at one another with long faces and hollow warning behind their eyes. _Something’s not right._

In a desperate bid against inaction, Sandor spun to the phone behind the bar and punched in Sansa’s number with shaky hands. His fingers drummed a nervous rhythm against the counter. Instead of a ring, three tones blared along with an intercept message.

“We’re sorry. The number you dialed is not in service or has been temporarily disconnected.”

Sandor pulled the phone from his ear and gaped at it in his hand. He frantically jabbed the receiver tab and tried again. The same recording came. He tried again. And then once more. With each trio of shrill tones, his frustration surmounted, threatening to boil over until he slammed the receiver down hard and the phone’s plastic case cracked with the force.

“I see you’re busy, so I’ll help myself.” Griff’s deep voice and long drawl resounded behind him with faint amusement but mostly concern.

Sandor turned around and chewed his lip so hard he’d probably draw blood if he kept at it. Damn near soaked to the bone, Griff settled onto a stool and reached over the bar to fetch a glass. He placed it under the tap that he shoved forward, but contemplated Sandor from beneath the brim of his cream-colored Stetson. His gray mustache twitched with a scowl, but Sandor saw the worry gathering in the man’s eyes.

Griff stopped the flow of beer and sipped from his glass but still stared at Sandor. The man surely observed the distress pouring off of him.

“What’s the matter with you?” Griff asked with unusual hesitation.

Huffing an agitated breath, Sandor folded his arms over his chest and his boot heel tapped an awful rhythm against the floor.

“Sansa’s line is dead. Something’s wrong,” he spit out like a bad omen. 

Bronn appeared behind the bar, but his eyes went wide and shifted between Sandor and Griff, his usual jovial wit darkening as he listened.

“Devil Creek is getting hit bad with the storm,” Griff reassured and wiped the beer foam from his mustache. “I’m sure her power is just knocked out.”

In fuming silence, Sandor gnawed on the bit of logic Griff tossed at him. Another man might’ve accepted it and hung onto it for comfort. It only further unnerved Sandor, and he wasn’t just any man. He had his flaws that reared their ugliness here and there, but his instincts had been sharpened with war and imprisonment like a blade against whetstone.

Sandor ripped his hat from his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. His stomach twisted in knots and his fingers twitched to release anxious energy.

“Did she say something earlier that got you upset?” Bronn interjected cautiously.

“No, I just know something’s wrong,” Sandor explained and paced behind the bar like a wild caged animal. “I can feel it. Can’t you?”

Bronn and Griff exchanged a glance with one another, but Bronn voiced whatever passed between them.

“It’s just the storm.” He reached out to corral Sandor who shrugged him off and slumped against the wood-paneled wall. “Things always feel off when a storm comes in,” Bronn offered, but hardly made a dent in Sandor’s foul mood.

“It’s not the fucking storm!” Sandor roared and blotted out the din of the bar. Curious eyes landed on him and prying ears strained to listen over the sound of the wind roaring outside.

He pushed from the wall and glowered at Bronn; a look laden with warning not to interfere. Sandor tried to shoulder past him, but Bronn blocked his path at the end of the bar.

“C’mon, man,” Bronn boldly protested. “Don’t tell me you’re leaving.”

Sandor settled back on his heels and glanced at Griff who’d all but forgotten his beer. The foam had disappeared, and he cautiously surveyed the beginnings of a brawl.

“I gotta go,” was all Sandor had to say to Bronn.

The man had his place in this world, the hole he fit into and the purpose he served, but he was never the intuitive kind. He believed what he saw and didn’t bother to dig much deeper. Bronn gawked at Sandor, apparently waiting for an explanation or something tangible Sandor could point to. When Sandor faltered now, Bronn spoke again with exasperation wearing his voice thin.

“No, you’re only halfway through your shift and—”

“I don’t remember the part where I asked for permission,” Sandor interrupted and felt the slow rise of anger warming his cheeks and quickening his breath. “I’m not asking for shit. I’m telling you I’m leaving, and you best get out of my way.”

_You don’t know who I am._

The thought flashed across Sandor’s mind. After all these years, he’d changed, and a hard life had redefined for him what truly mattered. Some dead-end job at his best friend’s bar just wasn’t it, and not when something was screaming inside that Sansa needed him. Even if he showed up in Devil Creek and it was as simple as her fear of the storm, Sandor considered being there for her far more important than slinging Bud Light across a bar.

Bronn double-downed and laid one palm against Sandor’s chest. “You need to calm down.”

Sandor released a dark chuckle. Two could play this game and he would always win. He stepped forward, toe-to-toe with his friend, and stared down Bronn who would fold whether he wanted to or not.

Sandor lowered his voice to something like a growl and with all the matching ferocity behind his eyes. “Step aside or you’ll lose more than just an employee tonight.”

Sandor watched as Bronn thought it over and, for a moment, it appeared he might stand his ground. 

“Bronn, get the fuck out of his way,” Griff scolded with a laugh, the only man on earth who could pull off humor in a moment like this.

Bronn begrudgingly stepped aside, and Sandor strode past him. As he rounded the end of the bar, Sandor tipped his hat to Griff who returned the gesture with the ghost of a smile.

“Be careful! It’s hell out there and the devil is out tonight.”

Sandor was already bounding for the door as Griff issued his warning. He didn’t stop to respond, only barreled into the deluge of rain. Not three steps out the door, his boots filled with water and soaked his socks underneath. A relic of his past, he winced at the wetness, but jogged to his truck and fumbled with the keys before hopping in.

He peeled out of the parking lot and through monstrous puddles that splashed against the side of his truck. In a race against time and battling the storm that raged overhead, Sandor sped towards the highway at a reckless speed. The wiper blades were as good as useless in keeping up with the torrent that pounded his windshield. He could hardly see as he navigated the on-ramp, and the only saving grace were the lights that dotted the highway. He followed along parallel with them and hoped like hell they’d guide the way.

Every mile was hard won, and Sandor knew he dangerously tempted fate with the steady pressure he applied to the accelerator. He’d ease off only when the ass end of his truck fishtailed and threatened to spin out. On it went. He pushed the limits with his heart racing in his chest, panicked at something he still couldn’t name, and he didn’t know what he was speeding towards.

As the highway narrowed, the journey only became more perilous. With the lights snuffed out, the road was dark, no beacons to offer safe passage. The water had breeched the sides of the road and loomed treacherously close to flooding. Sandor eased the truck towards the center of two lanes, but he hit a deep puddle and his back end slid out, sending the truck spinning towards the shoulder of the road.

He gripped the wheel, fighting like mad to keep control. Chaos ripped through the sky up above with booming thunder and rising wind. Sandor hit the brakes and his truck landed against a guardrail, but blessedly came to a stop before careening down a deep ravine beyond.

Frenzied breaths exploded from his lips and a cold sweat slicked his brow. With the savage storm overhead, defeat railed into Sandor. He was losing time against an unknown foe, and something within cautioned about the brutal stakes. Frustration took hold. He slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel and screamed his rage but felt no better for it.

Sandor collapsed against the steering wheel and wrapped his arms around it, forehead pressed to the top. By some miraculous turn of fate, the constant battering of rain against his windshield eased. The wind died down and ceased its rocking of the truck. When Sandor lifted his head, the rain had let up to a drizzle and, while the storm hadn’t passed, it eased enough that he pulled back onto the highway.

Like a bat straight out of hell, Sandor slammed the accelerator and, dead set on making up lost time, gained back more speed and the miles dissolved away at a faster pace. The journey had become less treacherous, but no less fraught. His hands trembled fiercely, and he gnawed his bottom lip as he pushed down further on the pedal, testing the boundaries of his good fortune.

By sheer luck alone, the storm’s violent might lifted long enough to grant safe passage most of the way to Devil Creek and Sandor rolled into town just as the sky opened up again. The vicious assault resumed with ferocity that seemed determined to outdo itself.

Sandor navigated around fallen tree limbs and onto the side streets leading to Sansa’s house. The saturated earth could hold no more water. Rain gushed from the flooded storm drains and rushed down the streets with a steady current. Adrenaline pumped through him and left his head spinning but senses acute as he eyed each house. Lights still burned in some; others were dark. The power apparently hadn’t gone out, but he screeched to a halt outside of Sansa’s pitch-black house. 

He grabbed his handgun from the glove box and jumped from his truck with a gut-wrenching hollowness besieging him. He half-expected to roll up feeling foolish for blindly following a false instinct. That feeling never came. Instead, something menacing and grim loomed more omnipresent and suffocating now than ever, reaching a fever-pitch that sent Sandor sprinting towards her door.

He tried the handle. Locked. He slammed his shoulder into the door, pounding hard and harder. Nothing and no one came. No lights turned on. He jabbed at the doorbell. No movement. Nothing. Just haunting stillness that was wrong. It was all wrong.

Sandor sunk against the door with horror filling him up. Incensed by the night, he balled up his fist and smashed the glass panel next to the dead bolt. The glass cracked and Sandor struck it again with all his anger behind it until it shattered. He picked up a rock near the bushes and cleared free the broken glass from the panel.

He reached in, unlocked the door, and bolted inside with his weapon drawn, but froze a few steps in. A blood-curdling chill nearly stole his breath, and he felt like the walls were caving in all around him.

From the speaker, a song played. _Dream Lover._

Coincidences like this didn’t exist. Everything had a reason, and those reasons snapped into place so abruptly that it tore Sandor from the petrified horror that rendered him unable to move.

“Sansa!” he bellowed in the living room and tore down the hall to her bedroom. He called out her name again, but the sound died in his throat as he bounded into the room.

The bedside lamp was on and offered enough light that Sandor saw the blood-stained bed linens. The comforter and top sheet were in chaos, crumpled from an obvious struggle. A short length of cut rope sat at the center of the bed and a shotgun on the floor.

“Fuck,” he seethed on a breath drawn thin from terror and the overwhelming sense that he’d come too late. It’d take him under and bring him to his knees that struggled to hold his weight now.

A faint clatter sounded from the kitchen, enough for Sandor’s faculties to snap in place, and sent him hurtling down the hall. The true horror met him in the kitchen where dull streetlight poured in through the window and a sudden flash of lightning tore through the room.

The man Sandor had seen at the bar just the other night stood at the center of the kitchen with his hand clamped hard on Sansa’s mouth. The other hand pressed a butcher knife to her throat. At the bar, he hadn’t ordered a drink and Sandor had only briefly glimpsed his face that’d been obscured by his hat. The man had faded into the background like all the other strangers Sandor encountered.

Trapped in a vise-like grip with her back against the intruder’s chest, Sansa heaved and, perhaps by instinct, lurched forward, but the man only tightened his grip. Red blotches stained the front of Sansa’s white nightgown and blood trickled down her arms.

Burning up with brutal rage, all of Sandor’s instincts screamed for him to close the distance, slaughter the man, and make him suffer, but his body didn’t respond. Sansa’s eyes brimmed with tears and the abject terror pouring through stopped him.

He knew now with unusual certainty just how dangerous the man was and that the knife pressed to Sansa’s throat was no idle threat. She was marked for death and the man had come to deliver.

Sandor froze in the kitchen's doorway and lifted his gun with trembling hands in horrible need of violent release. The intruder eased towards the back door. The knife blade gleamed as it caught the midnight light coming through the window. He stepped forward as the man’s feral gaze snapped to the gun, but quickly shifted back to Sandor.

Deranged, dead eyes peered at him through the darkness, but the calculated way the man moved, somehow graceful on his feet as he drifted for the door, scared Sandor even more. This was someone with a plan; someone who knew what they were doing and how to execute whatever horrendous deeds they had in store.

Time seemed to slow, but Sandor’s mind raced. He had to close the distance but, with every step he took, the man pressed the knife harder against Sansa’s throat and she winced and whimpered as he crushed her jaw with his hand.

“Let her go,” Sandor seethed as the feral part of him teemed inside, foaming at its proverbial mouth to be unleashed.

The man didn’t flinch, nor did he speak, but his face changed. Perhaps it was the shadows moving across as he inched closer to the backdoor and dragged Sansa along with him. As if possessed by some evil, his eyes were black, and he hardly looked human. The wind roared outside, and the rain battered the glass of the sliding door.

The intruder took one large step backwards and, though there was some diabolical quality to the fiend, he fumbled with the door handle. Sandor edged closer in quiet, almost indiscernible steps and locked eyes with Sansa whose chest heaved hysterical breaths. The man removed his hand from her mouth to unlock the door.

“Sandor!” she cried and squirmed in his grasp.

Helplessness battered him at the sound of her voice, so frantic to escape. By divine intervention, Sandor discerned something flapping in the wind. It flew towards the door with enough speed and force that it seemed hellbent on breaking through the glass. A crack of lightning illuminated an owl the moment before it smashed into the window with tremendous force.

The distraction was brief, a mere moment, but enough that Sandor darted across the kitchen just as Sansa dove to the floor in perfectly timed unison. Sandor careened into the man and they slammed to the ground. In the haze of his rage, Sandor only faintly discerned both the gun and the knife sliding across the linoleum floor.

The man writhed beneath Sandor with strength he had no right to for his size. Sandor lost the upper hand and plummeted to his side. Teeth gnashing and with a crazed look behind his black eyes, the intruder threw himself on top of Sandor, who lifted his arms to shield the frenzied blows.

Pain ripped through Sandor’s cheek and he fisted the man’s shirt, hurling him into the cabinets. The fury of the storm reached new heights—the dull thuds of their bodies colliding into one another; the booming of thunder; Sansa’s screams. The cacophony of sounds dampened as if Sandor was floating through water.

His focus remained, though. His mouth filled with blood. His heart would beat out of his chest at this rate. It pounded like a drum in his ears, or perhaps it was the blows the man was landing, one after the next, and eventually Sandor didn’t register the pain. He swung at the man who dodged and weaved with an acute deftness that infuriated Sandor even further. His head slammed into the side of the oven, catching a corner that ripped at his skin and the warmth of blood ran down Sandor’s face.

He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was putting down the threat. He focused and quickened his movements. Sandor scrambled over to the man and climbed on top of him. His fingers sunk into the greasy tendrils of his long blond hair. The man howled with a horrid scream as Sandor squeezed hard on his temples and slammed his head to the floor. His fist cracked across the man’s face and Sandor relished the spray of blood and the crunch of a broken bone.

He struck again. And once more; over and over until the man’s face was nothing but a bloody pulp and his body went limp. Still, he released his rage, cracking ribs and sinking his elbow into the man’s stomach.

Winded from the fight, Sandor eased off the man who didn’t move, nor did he respond when Sandor stood and delivered a powerful kick at his side. Behind him, Sandor heard Sansa’s whimpering cries, and he spun around to where she huddled on the floor with her back against the wall. She shook her head in disbelief and gaped at the man’s body, a crumpled and bloody mess.

Sandor collided to his knees in front of her and gathered her in his arms. She came more than willingly, almost crawling into his lap and releasing all her panic and fear into heavy sobs. He cradled her against his chest, breathed her in, and his fingers sunk in her hair.

“I’m here,” he sighed with his nose pressed to her cheek saturated with tears. “I’m here.”

“You came for me,” she keened in utter astonishment and wrapped her arms tighter around his shoulders. “He was going to kill me. He told me he was going to kill me.”

Sandor held her hard against his chest that still heaved from adrenaline and the somber knowledge of what might’ve happened had he arrived too late.

“No one’s gonna hurt you,” Sandor vowed on a tattered exhale. “I will never let anyone hurt you.”

He pulled away and cupped her cheeks in his palms. Even in the pale light pouring through the kitchen window, he saw the awful pallor of her face drained of blood and now just a mask of dread.

“He said it before I left. He said he’d kill me,” Sansa muttered in a terror-stricken state that left her delirious. “He always said he’d kill me. He always said it.”

Sandor felt his brow fold, unable to follow the frenzied path of her thoughts until he realized her past with the intruder extended well beyond this bedeviled night.

“Sansa, is it him? It’s Joffrey?”

Halfway through a nod, Sansa’s eyes shifted behind Sandor’s shoulder and she let out a sharp gasp just as a clang resounded behind him. He spun around and Joffrey, though badly injured, had hoisted himself up against the counter. Sandor jumped to his feet. His eyes darted about the kitchen. Weapon, he needed a weapon, and Joffrey shared the thought as they both simultaneously scanned the dark.

At the base of the fridge, he saw it—the dull glint of a metal barrel—and Sandor dove for the gun as the man hobbled over to it. As soon as the gun’s grip met his palm, Sandor snatched it up and sprung to his feet. He trained the sights on Joffrey, who collapsed against the counter and smiled through a face slick with blood.

“If you move, I’ll bury a bullet in your skull,” Sandor warned and racked the slide. “Call the police,” he muttered to Sansa.

In the periphery of his vision, Sansa slowly rose to her feet and ripped the phone from its cradle. Sandor stared down Joffrey whose expression had gone blank again and something about his sinister inability to register the proper emotions unnerved Sandor deep within his being. It was the way he watched Sansa that departed a sickening feeling. Joffrey glared at her with vile hatred and devious delight that lifted the corner of his mouth in a smile.

Sandor had seen this look before in the men who volunteered for war to satisfy blood lust. They raped and murdered, tortured and mutilated as their units moved through villages and they left a body count in their wake. He’d seen it in prison too; the most violent offenders, the ones everyone knew to leave alone because something evil festered in them and rejoiced in atrocities conjured from the depths of hell.

Sandor heard Sansa frantically smashing the buttons on the phone and the ragged breaths that passed her lips.

“The line’s still dead,” she panted on a thin voice, almost a whisper.

Lightning ripped through the kitchen and lit up Joffrey’s face. He grinned again—disgusting and lascivious—and kept his dead eyes on Sansa who dropped the phone to the floor.

“Filthy. Cock-sucking. Whore.” He hurled each insult with deliberate and staccato cadence and a devilish voice that somehow matched the malevolent way he stared at Sansa.

Horrified, Sandor glanced at her. With debilitating fear, she’d gone still with her back against the wall as this monster exerted his control over her. She didn’t seem to notice or register where she was or that Sandor was here with her. She just stared back at the fiend as if unable to look away, and tears poured down her cheeks.

“Shut the fuck up!” Sandor bellowed to break the spell, but the man didn’t flinch, nor did he take his eyes off of Sansa.

Instead, he spoke low, his voice darkening to an impossible grunting timbre, demonic and hardly human. It seemed to come from all directions in the room with what Sandor swore was supernatural assistance.

“I’m gonna kill you. I’m going to fuck you with a butcher knife and rip your insides out while you’re still alive to watch and—”

Enough was enough. Sandor pulled the trigger.

It was over in a burst of light, explosion of sound, and spray of blood.

Joffrey crumpled to the floor like a rag doll, his limbs contorting and folding in on themselves at odd angles. The gun’s recoil ripped through Sandor in a forgotten sensation he’d purposefully left behind. A strange calm washed over him, and not for the absence of horror.

Sandor battled the disconnect—the way a foreign presence took over when a gun rested in his hands—and the ease at which he slipped outside of himself brought fresh terror. _Don’t go back there,_ a part of him warned against giving in to this darkness, so he turned away from it.

But it wasn’t just his own internal barometer of right and wrong that pulled him out of it. Sansa screamed, her palms covering her ears though no more gunfire came. He didn’t need a second round. He shot to kill. It was how he’d been trained and the blood gushing from the bullet wound in Joffrey’s head was testament to that.

In an uncanny calm incongruent to what he’d just done, Sandor set the gun to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and slowly sat. With one outstretched hand, he circled Sansa’s wrist and guided her towards him. When she refused to turn away from the dead body in her kitchen, Sandor leaned forward, grabbed her by the hips, and pulled her onto his lap.

She came willingly now, as if lost in a catatonic daze. He wrapped his arms around her and cradled the back of her head with his hand. In his embrace, she didn’t have to see the pool of blood seeping across the kitchen floor, the bits of brain bathing her cabinets, or how Joffrey’s eyes were still open and staring at them.

“It’s over,” he muttered and rocked her gently. “It’s over now,” he repeated on a hoarse whisper. Against the backdrop of _Dream Lover_ , reality sunk in as the blood inched closer to the chair he sat in as if, even in death, Joffrey was hellbent on having the last word.

“It’s over,” Sandor said more forcefully and aimed at the corpse, though the truth blared like a siren in his mind.

It wasn’t over and this was only the beginning.

* * *

Rainwater pattered the windshield with each gust of dying wind that rustled through the trees above. Their canopies blotted out the moonlight that triumphed over the storm that’d long since passed. In its wake, dense fog rolled in and the night grew still in the aftermath of the storm’s brutality.

Sandor and Sansa sat in silence. Heavy shadows crept against Sandor’s truck. He’d eased off the country road and down a gravel path leading to the woods. Off to the side, he parked the truck as far into the tangle of tree limbs and roots as he could before he’d start pushing his luck. The last thing they needed was to get stranded in the forest with a dead body in his truck bed.

Sandor glanced at Sansa in her brother’s old bomber jacket that nearly swallowed her whole. She chewed her bottom lip and her limbs were crossed tight over one another, all coiled up like a spring and housing the tension in her frame. Her top leg bounced in a nervous rhythm as she cast an empty gaze out the windshield.

The aftermath left Sansa in a trance-like stupor. Sandor had had to remind her to peel out of her blood-stained nightgown before they left the house. She’d stood in front of her closet, staring at the clothes but not quite seeing, so he’d come in and plucked a pair of dark pants from the hanger. It’d been enough to rip her from her haunted daydream. She’d reached for a red shirt, but Sandor intervened. Black. He explained that they needed to blend into the night, and red was a rather odd choice for that.

He reached over now and settled his hand on her thigh and gave a gentle squeeze. It was as much to stop the incessant way her leg bounced as it was to provide comfort. He’d been trying at the latter for hours now and had seemed to only scratch the surface.

After the heart-pounding terror lifted, the full weight of the mess they’d made took up that void. Sandor had extracted the body with painstaking precision to avoid tracking blood through the house. The meticulous attention burned through the time they had before sunrise. Sandor hoped like hell it’d pay dividends when they returned to the house to clean up the rest of the mess.

In hindsight, his insistence that Sansa stay behind while he took care of the body was well-intentioned but misguided. If nothing else, it snapped her out of her stupor, and she had categorically refused in a torrent of tears. The immediate threat had been put down, but other fears had sprouted. They took root in her in ways Sandor couldn’t comprehend and Sansa didn’t have the words to explain.

He’d taken her in his arms, kissed her until the tears stopped, and listened to the tale she had to tell. He knew parts of it, but not the totality. By the end, he understood the origin of her terror and the nightmare they would now face.

Joffrey was the heir to an oil empire, and his family’s connections were as deep as they were corrupt. That family exacted their might with crushing and relentless blows meant to silence and subdue anyone that’d wronged them or sought to expose the full extent of their devious deeds. With staggering pervasiveness, they’d infiltrated business, politics, law enforcement, media; no aspect of seemingly civil society had gone untouched by their venom.

Sansa branded herself a fool. She’d believed she’d been spared their wrath; that they let her quietly slip away and fade out of their existence. She’d left Joffrey seemingly on an unplanned whim, never to be heard from again. Just when she thought she was free and could stop looking over her shoulder, disaster found her, and the monster had come to make good on a vow; the same one he made the night she left him. He would kill her—for the embarrassment she caused; for slipping from his claws; for having the audacity to find happiness and love again.

After she divulged the terrible truth, Sansa and Sandor made a pact. They’d get rid of the body, clean up the mess, and hope like hell the family assumed their prodigal son had no plans to come home again. Perhaps they’d deduce that he’d gone off and done something reckless. And hadn’t he? Sandor meant what he said—no one would ever hurt Sansa and he’d bury anyone who ever tried.

His eyes shifted to the dashboard clock and the time running towards three in the morning, the devil’s hour. It seemed fitting somehow, but the sun wasn’t far from rising and Sandor knew they’d better be gone when it did.

He leaned over Sansa and flipped open the glove compartment where he pulled out an engraved silver flask. Along the way, he pressed a kiss to her cheek and apologized once more for the fine fucking mess they were in.

Sandor scrutinized the grove of trees that thinned just outside the windshield. He twisted off the flask’s cap and took a long swig of whiskey, the taste of it sweet on his tongue but bitter in how it settled in his belly that twisted in knots. He passed the flask to Sansa, who contemplated it for a moment before accepting.

Though he could only make out her silhouette, Sandor remarked internally how beautiful she was, the only thing he ever wanted, and she was his. The thought of losing her would tear him up, so he cast the thought aside and admired her in the velvet shadows.

With the flask cradled in her palm, Sansa stared at its engraving and ran the tip of one finger over the swirling letters of his father’s name.

“It’s gorgeous,” she complimented on a sad whisper.

“It was my pop’s,” Sandor replied. “I don’t have much left of him. It’s fitting that I inherited his flask and not much else, I guess.”

Sansa studied the flask a moment longer before lifting it to her lips and taking a delicate sip.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sandor asked for perhaps the third time and listened close for any hesitation.

Sansa nodded. “Yes,” she said with more insistence than the last time he’d asked. Each round seemed to only further galvanize her will. 

“We can still go to the police, Sansa,” he pressed in a last-ditch effort, though he had no alternative to the two options on the table. Even he knew there wasn’t a third path to take. “It was self-defense. He was going to kill you.”

“You don’t understand what his family is like,” she countered with terrified vehemence running through her voice. “None of that will matter to any of them. He’s a monster.” She paused and glanced out the back window to the body in the truck bed. “… _was_ a monster,” she corrected and leveled her eyes at him. “But he was still their golden child. They will watch both of us burn before they let us get away with this.”

Sandor studied her face—graceful features, free from torment now, but still haunted. It wasn’t as if she didn’t recognize the gravity of the situation, but it seemed to Sandor they were standing at a crossroads with one another. The decision point offered no turning back. Whatever path they chose, they’d have to travel it to the end.

“The night you came to the bar after we fought,” Sandor began and turned his gaze out the windshield that fogged up at the corners now. “Joffrey was there, hanging around the jukebox and playing that same Bobby Darin song. He left just a few minutes before you came in.”

Sandor shifted his eyes to Sansa and, even in the dim light, could see her face drained of pallor and her eyes filling up with fright.

“He was watching us,” she whispered, and tears spilled down her cheeks. Sandor cupped her face and wiped them away with the pad of his thumb. He matched her eyes and lowered his voice.

“When it comes to this, there is no us. You didn’t do anything. I’m the one who killed him. He was following me too, intent to make me a part of his sick game. I will never let you take the fall for any of this. But if you get out of the truck with me and we get rid of him, there’s no going back. We can’t bury a body and then claim self-defense.”

Sansa seemed to consider it momentarily as she dropped her eyes to her lap and her brow furrowed with deep unease.

“This is the only way,” she maintained with finality that Sandor would honor. She bit her bottom lip to quell fresh tears.

“Come here,” he whispered and reached across the seat to pull her towards him. Sansa burrowed against his side and buried her face in his chest. “I love you,” he whispered and smoothed his hand down her back. “It’s gonna be okay.”

The last bit felt like a lie passing his lips. He had no way of knowing and neither did she, but Sansa nodded anyhow and whispered that she loved him too. When she sat up, Sandor could discern the resolve taking hold in her. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, tipped up her chin, and held out the flask to Sandor.

He shook his head. “Keep it in your pocket. We’ll probably need it again.”

They both forgot about the flask after Sansa screwed on the lid and slipped it into her jacket’s deep pocket. Well away from the road, far enough that no one was likely to look here, Sandor and Sansa went to work digging a hole. The shovels sunk easily into the ground, sodden and soft from the rain. The mud came up in heavy clumps that they tossed aside.

When Sansa’s pace slowed, Sandor sent her off to rest in the truck and keep watch on the gravel path for any intruders. The monotony of his movements offered at least some silent respite as he dug further into the ground. He severed gnarled and knotted roots and dug into a layer of craggy rock. He eventually stopped when the hole was deep enough that the ground water pooled at the bottom and he couldn’t reach with the shovel anyhow.

With the spade sunk into the ground next to the hole, Sandor rested both hands on the wooden end of the shovel. The night had grown damp and humid as the fog lifted. Sweat slicked his forehead and his body now protested the lack of sleep as fatigue settled deep in his bones. He abandoned the shovel and retreated the thirty feet back up a shallow sloping hill.

As he emerged from the thicket of branches and shrubbery overtaking the path, Sansa pushed from the side of the truck. She gaped at him as Sandor put on a pair of work gloves and dropped the tailgate. The body was wrapped in a small tarp and tied in rope. Pulling by the ankles, Sandor slid the corpse to the end of the cargo bed but stopped when Sansa manifested next to his side.

“I can help you carry him,” she offered, but refused to look at the tarp. She steadied her eyes on the gravel road behind the truck.

“No,” he replied firm and motioned to her bare hands. “You’ll get your prints all over. He’s not that big. I can carry him down.”

Sansa acquiesced with a small nod and stood aside. She trailed behind him as Sandor carried the body into the woods, careful not to twist his ankle on loose earth or tree roots. When he reached the hole, Sandor dumped the body inside. He ripped off one glove and took Sansa’s hand.

For a moment, they stood side-by-side and hand-in-hand and peered into the hole that was far deeper than it was wide. The body had jackknifed on itself at an awkward angle. 

Without a word or ceremony, Sandor retrieved the shovel and began refilling the hole with displaced earth. Sansa assisted, and between the two of them, they made quick work of filling the hole. When it was done, they said nothing but retraced the path with their shovels and without so much as a glance backwards.

Nothing was said between the two of them about it, but Sandor understood, and Sansa did too that they could leave the past behind and, with it, this deadly secret they now shared. But they both knew in their own way the reality they’d likely face and that the past had a funny way of catching up to the present to spoil the future.


	18. The Chain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hi! I’m breaking the Tuesday update pattern for this chapter only.
> 
> While I recognize that fandom space is not and should not be American-centric, I’m posting early because I know that I will not be in fanfiction headspace on Tuesday and I figure some of you might be in the same boat. 
> 
> So, if you’d like to read early and free from election night stress, I wanted folks to have that option. If you’d like to indulge on Tuesday per usual, you, of course, have the option to save it for then!

_“Darling, sometimes the true blessing is an unanswered prayer.”_

Her momma used to say that when Sansa left a pageant with a useless ribbon in hand—some cheap length of satin gilded with even cheaper consolation—instead of a jeweled crown on her head. Sansa never prayed to win a pageant, so she never blamed God for not listening. Besides, He had better things to do. The bit of wisdom had stuck with her, though, resting dormant until she needed it the most. And where she needed it was her lost years with Joffrey.

At a dinner party once, Sansa donned a gold sequined gown that chaffed her skin and hardly fit, but she wore it because he insisted, and she knew the consequences of refusing. They’d grown deadly by then and she walked the tightrope of his fury. A misspoken word or act of defiance, and he’d fly into a rage that would send her tumbling to her doom.

Across an exquisitely decorated table of flowers and candlelight, she’d stared at him when he lifted his champagne flute in salute to his own extraordinary genius. He’d overseen the acquisition of a fledgling oil company; a vulture seizing on the dying weak was more like it.

The table had laughed and beamed at that glittering fool, and those who didn’t know Sansa might’ve mistaken her forced smile and unwavering gaze as doting affection instead of burning hatred. She’d lifted her glass and hoped, prayed, and begged for his death. An accident. A tragedy. An illness.

It never came.

Insult to injury, he terrorized her by night but was lauded a titan of industry by day and afforded luxuries beyond imagination. It was around that time she stopped praying to the vacant heavens and decided that, if God existed, He was awfully cruel to let her suffer a monster like Joffrey.

It seemed to Sansa a tremendous farce that her prayer had been answered now. She’d rather it had fallen through the cracks—no harm, no foul—because the thing about murder was that it ended more than one life. The irony was that she’d only prayed for Joffrey to die so she might live free from fear. But here she was—shackled with guilt and sordid emotions that would surely deplete her soul until she was a tired and empty shell.

She and Sandor had turned in just as dawn dusted the horizon in gold to drive out the night. She’d cried outside the bedroom door at first, refusing to revisit the scene of such horror. Sandor had already cleared the room and put it back to rights. He’d led her by the hand, laid her down on the bed, and retraced other memories for her. It wasn’t the bed of horrors, but the bed where they first made love, where she first fell asleep in his arms, where they first awoke all tangled up in one another.

“Remember that?” he’d cajoled with so much loving patience and his hand brushing through her hair.

Once the tossing and turning had stopped, Sansa’s body gave into sheer exhaustion, but her mind hadn’t ceased its dreadful churning. Even her dreams ensnared her with horrific images. Joffrey haunted her from the corners of those lucid nightmares. In them, his corpse was rotten and black, and worms poured from his decaying mouth when he went to speak.

Last night, Sansa had scarcely recognized him when he peeled off the black stocking and revealed himself. He’d grown out his hair in long, greasy blond strands and a beard to match. His eyes would torment her, though. Black. Soulless. So absent humanity that she had struggled to believe it was really him.

Sansa woke with fresh terror and certain something, a presence perhaps, watched her from the corner of the bedroom but nothing was there, just the sun pouring through the window and bathing her in light that felt false in its grace.

When she and Sandor peeled themselves out of bed, he hadn’t fared much better in sleep and looked worse for the wear but didn’t want to talk about it and neither did Sansa. Though nothing was said, she knew it wasn’t the guilt of what they’d done that kept them reticent but the fear of what it could spell for the future.

They commenced their morning routine at a quarter past two in the afternoon. The coffee percolated. Sansa buttered toast with trembling hands. Sandor perused the paper with distracted eyes that drifted about the kitchen as if still on high alert. In a suspended state, they danced around the shadow in the room and in a silent requiem for all that might’ve been lost to the night.

Sansa poured another cup of coffee for herself and Sandor. Leaned against the kitchen counter, she contemplated the blood smeared on the sliding glass door. Sansa didn’t know how to reconcile the sadness she felt for the owl with the horror that’d unfolded in the very spot where she stood. 

People always said the world was mysterious. Other forces existed amongst mere mortals. She’d experienced both last night—the true manifestation of evil and the grace that’d delivered her from it.

“We’ll have to clean that,” Sansa remarked with quiet apathy, though it wasn’t as if she didn’t care about the owl.

She cared enough that she wrapped its body in a delicately embroidered tea towel and placed it in the grave Sandor had dug next to the garden in the backyard. She’d gathered rocks to fashion a cross over the mound of loose dirt. Sansa cried as she pressed those rocks into the mud one at a time. Sandor had placed a dandelion on top. Sansa’s tears had stopped then.

Perhaps it was all too much. She’d gone numb to anything more than what she felt in the present, and her mind had thrown up blockades around the rest. She knew it was there. She just couldn’t reach it.

“I’ll take care of it. Come sit with me,” Sandor muttered and reached for her, though she was already on her way to him.

Sansa took her spot at the table adjacent to him and handed off his coffee mug. His hair still dried in damp waves and stubble peppered his jawline. Now and then, he’d scratch at it and desire stirred in Sansa, a desperate need for comfort in intimacy. With his eyes down turned, he settled back in the seat and ran his fingers through his hair with a heavy sigh. 

Something had hardened in him. His eyes were a stonier gray and his frowns more resolute, but Sansa existed on the same side of the walls he’d erected. Whatever they’d landed themselves in—however deep and however grave the consequences—they were in it together and some might’ve called that a lonely existence, but the entire world could burn away, and Sansa wouldn’t care much as long as Sandor was still beside her when it did.

He lifted his eyes to her and reached across the table to take her hand.

“You okay?” he whispered, and his brow furrowed.

“No,” she answered honestly and sipped her coffee to avoid the intensity of his penetrating stare. 

He scooted closer to the table and leaned forward but didn’t speak again until Sansa obliged his gaze. “It’s gonna be alright,” he insisted with certainty whose origins Sansa couldn’t trace.

While they existed in this new reality together, Sandor came equipped with things Sansa didn’t. Chief among them, the belief that this was all just a transitory state. They were simply tourists to the aftermath of horror but would eventually move on and head for the safety and shelter of home, whatever form that took now.

She didn’t quite agree, but Sansa nodded anyhow. The light that filtered into the kitchen held a grotesque quality as if pouring through the dark clouds that seemed to loom overhead despite a clear blue sky.

Sansa studied him in the light and, as if seeing him through fresh eyes, noticed things she hadn’t before—the pattern of his scars; just how nicely the shape of his nose suited his face; the curve of his lips and its cupid’s bow slightly off center. She slid to the edge of her seat and wrapped her arms around his neck to draw him nearer.

They’d tried to make love after they woke, but neither of them could manage it and, before Sansa could inherit the guilt of letting him down, he’d kissed her tenderly and told her all he needed in that moment was to hold her. And so he did. Locked at the eyes, they’d held onto one another and the grief swept in for what might’ve been lost. Sandor had been moved to tears, but Sansa contemplated her own mortality with academic fascination, noting its facets and peculiarities.

For once, she had been the one to kiss away his sorrow, but she’d tucked her mortal peril away somewhere inside and didn’t know how to find it again. Wherever it was, it’d have to be cleaned up too.

With her forehead pressed against Sandor’s now, Sansa closed her eyes and recited the only thing she knew for certain anymore.

“I love you more than anything. There’s nothing else but you.”

“I love you too,” he whispered against her lips and kissed her softly before a confession came. “I was afraid you’d think less of me for what I did.”

He glanced at the sink and Sansa knew what he meant. To look at the kitchen now, no one would ever know what happened. That was the point.

Sansa didn’t know what had been worse—the blood or the bleach. The smell of the latter overwhelmed, and her throat was still raw from the fumes. It’d been everywhere. Bleach on the floor. Bleach on the cabinets. The bed sheets bleached. Towels, every towel she owned it seemed, that’d sopped up the blood, all bleached. Bleach on her hands that’d gone pruney from the mop water. It’d taken all night to sort out the mess, but it had to be done. _Leave no trace behind._

Sansa had even made a tasteless joke in the delirium of fatigue and the quarantining of her emotions that Sandor seemed to know an awful lot about how to make someone disappear. If he was offended, Sansa wouldn’t have known.

Sandor had taken pristine care in removing the body and covering their tracks. He’d detached himself from the situation and cleaned up blood, brain, and bone from the floor with no more disgust than cleaning up crumbs. He had remarked that, after being in prison for five years, a person learns a thing or two from others.

Sansa cupped his cheeks now and turned his head back towards her to meet his gaze.

“I’ve never thought less of you,” she assured with vehemence that captured his attention. He nodded, eased back in his seat, and sipped his coffee with reclaimed repose.

Sansa eyed the clock barreling towards three and a somber smile creased her lips.

“What?” Sandor asked and expelled a shallow laugh.

“I was so worried about calling out of work today.” She stared across the table at him and cradled the coffee mug between her palms where the warmth seeped in. “Seems ironic. I had to call out anyway. I could’ve just stayed at your place last night and none of this would’ve happened.”

In his science fiction books, Bran read all about alternate realities that split off and existed in parallel. Swept up in a sea of love, Sansa had even told Sandor about it—that every decision sent people down a path to another world and, in some other realm, their double lived another life, the product of those decisions. What Sansa wouldn’t give to fall through space and time to some parallel world where she woke up in Sandor’s bed, in his arms, and with last night’s horror erased.

Sandor wouldn’t abide by the folly of the notion, Sansa knew. His face went grim again—steely eyes, down-turned lips, and rigidity that offered no dalliance in such daydreams.

“Sansa, this wasn’t a random crime of opportunity where if you hadn’t been home last night, he would’ve just moved on to someone else. He was stalking you.” His eyes shifted to the phone on the wall next to him. “All those phone calls you’ve been getting. He was planning this and, if it wasn’t last night, it would’ve been tonight or the next one. God forbid, maybe I wouldn’t have been here to stop him.”

When he finished, Sandor lifted his mug to his lips but kept his eyes on Sansa, evaluating her over the rim. He was right, of course. He was always right, or perhaps blessed with instincts others could only hope for.

“How did you know?” Sansa asked. “You knew something was wrong. You knew it even before I left your house yesterday.”

Sandor considered the question and a shadow fell over him. His shoulders rolled in a nonplussed shrug, but the answer wasn’t so simple, it seemed. He stared at the sliding glass. The owl’s blood had dried to a dark brown smear with feathers stuck in the gore.

“Sometimes the world feels different,” he replied with frightening gravity Sansa hadn’t expected. “The wind moves through the trees in an odd way, the light looks different, nothing seems right.” He looked to her now. His eyes subtly drifted about her face with thoughts he was intent to keep to himself. “I don’t know. It was just a sense. I knew something was off.”

Sansa nodded as if she understood and gazed into her coffee mug. She turned it slowly against the table and watched wisps of creamer twirling with the movement and small bubbles form in the wake. The weight of Sandor’s stare pressed into her as the quiet moments ticked by.

“You finding storms in that teacup?” he finally said with a gentle laugh, but it still held a warning against the worry clouding Sansa’s mind.

“It’s a mug, not a teacup,” she corrected with a wry smile. 

“Same difference. You know damn well what I mean.” Sandor lifted one brow at her. With his legs kicked out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, he folded his arms over his chest. “You can’t dwell on what could’ve happened. It didn’t. End of story.”

“I’m not worried about what could’ve happened. I’m worried about where we go from here.”

The past was the past. Sansa had already discovered that bit of wisdom and made amends with it long ago. She’d left her home with a head full of foolish dreams and in love with the wrong kind of man. The path back home had been littered with regrets and, had she stopped to pick up each one, she would have been crushed beneath their weight. Sansa left those would-be burdens on the side of the road and didn’t look back. This wouldn’t be so easy.

Sandor’s eyes drifted to where a dead body once laid across the kitchen floor in a pool a blood. “We move on,” he intoned. “We bury this in the past where it belongs and focus on our future together.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of—that we go off and make plans, build a life, and it’s taken away after we just found our freedom together. I’m scared of losing you.”

Sansa finished with a bitter sting of tears and her chest constricting with another wave of suffocating pressure. Sandor sat up once more, leaned forward until he was eye level with her, and gripped Sansa’s thigh.

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere without one hell of a fight,” he avowed, and she believed him as much by the words he said as the vehemence burning in him. “We just have to lay low for a while. We’ll ride out whatever comes from this and wait for it to blow over.”

The flicker of doubt didn’t last long, but Sansa saw it clear enough behind his eyes and the way his Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. Sansa knew he wouldn’t indulge his worries, at least not where she could see. Perhaps that was the only part he still reserved for himself. A man of many secrets, he’d shared most of them with her, but the proclivity to stow them away still existed.

Sansa said nothing but watched as Sandor’s mind went to work. He chewed his bottom lip and stared towards the back door.

“More rain came through early this morning,” he commented on a deep voice, low enough that Sansa wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or thinking out loud. “With any luck, the ground was too saturated to hold on to tire tracks. Besides, no one’s finding that hole. I can tell you that. And even if they do, we didn’t dig a shallow grave.”

For both of them, the logic soothed but couldn’t prevail over the seeds of doubt and fear that’d already been planted. When the summer rain swept in, both would grow wild and untamed. No one would find the body, but it wouldn’t be for a lack of trying. And if anyone would go to the ends of the earth and back to look, it would be Joffrey’s family. He wasn’t a nobody and, while she didn’t know how he’d been living his life over the past year, she knew well enough the hailstorm that was coming.

Sandor loosed a frustrated sigh; not quite with her, but his inability to pluck out her unease. Leaned forward with his forearms resting on his knees, Sandor took Sansa’s hand and kissed each of her knuckles.

“I tell you what—it’s not good for either of us to be here. There’s too much bad energy hanging around. We’ll get some things together, stay in Cactus until things settle, and try to regain some normalcy in the meantime.”

Sansa pressed her lips together and gave an urgent nod as the desire to flee roiled inside of her. “Okay,” she whispered. 

Sandor planted a tender kiss to her forehead and caressed the pad of his thumb against her cheek.

“He got what he had coming. And remember, you didn’t pull that trigger. I did. Absolve yourself of guilt and leave it behind.”

Without another word or moment where Sansa might object, Sandor stood from the table, downed the rest of his coffee, and set the mug in the sink.

“I’ll take care of the window,” he said and made for the back door, but turned to her again as he gripped the handle. “Take your time, but I’d like us to be back in Cactus before sundown.”

Sansa nodded with a doleful smile and, after Sandor disappeared into the backyard, she retreated to the bathroom where she shed her clothes. She spent more time in the shower than normal. Long after she’d washed her hair and scrubbed her skin with a soapy washcloth, she stood beneath the water, perhaps in an effort to wash away sin and clean the stains from her soul. By the time the water turned tepid, Sansa felt no better. She turned off the shower and wrapped herself in a towel.

Sansa wiped away the steam from the mirror and ran a comb through her hair. Something had dimmed in her. She could see it in the reflection. Her skin looked sallow in the bathroom light, and the dark purple beneath her dull eyes betrayed a fitful night of sleep.

_How did I get here?_

Had the path been all that winding? It must’ve been. If it had been a straight shot, unmarred by the strange turns her life had taken, Sansa could’ve seen this coming or at least felt the ripples in the water that warned of something lurking beneath the surface. Joffrey told her he’d kill her, and Sansa excused it as some hyperbolic manifestation of his hatred and anger towards her, but never a threat he’d make good on. She should’ve known.

With each pass of the comb through her wet hair, the cuts and scratches on her arm caught her eye. The damage looked far worse than what it was. She’d put up a fight and even landed a blow with the butt of the shot gun. The full force of his fury manifested then on wild slashes of the knife. She’d dropped the shot gun to shield herself and the blade had caught her skin in a shallow cut. Joffrey would have done worse but Sandor’s pounding at the front door interrupted and Joffrey dragged her down the hall and into the kitchen.

The kitchen.

The memories flashed across her mind. Dam broken, the thoughts came unfiltered—blood pooled on the floor and splattered across the cabinets; the gaping hole at the center of Joffrey’s forehead and the shards of skull ripping through the skin; the odd way his body contorted in the hole they buried him in. But the blood. There was so much blood. It was all she could think about, all she could see when she closed her eyes now and dropped the comb in the sink.

_You wanted him dead. All those years, you prayed for it. You demanded his death._

With her eyes squeezed shut, Sansa shook her head to drive out the invasive thoughts that just wouldn’t leave her alone. _Go away. Go. Go._

The harder she tried to dispel them, the more vivid the memories became; rising in her pulse and raging at her core until her mouth filled with saliva and her stomach lurched. Sansa dashed to the toilet and flipped up the lid. She collided to her knees just in time as the acidity hit the back of her throat. She vomited up what little was in her stomach—coffee and toast—and even afterwards dry heaved with whatever else her body wanted to expel.

Her heart raced, and her eyes pearled with fresh tears. For a moment, she clung to the toilet bowl and waited for more. She’d been sick on and off all night in between spells of sleep that lasted only long enough to conjure nightmares. Nothing else came, though, just an eerie stillness setting in. She wiped her mouth with the back of one trembling hand, pushed herself from the floor, and flushed the toilet.

Determined to put herself back together again, Sansa brushed her teeth and dried her hair that she brushed straight until it gleamed. She didn’t bother much with her makeup—a bit of blush across her cheeks, concealer and powder beneath her eyes to look alive, and a coat of mascara. Everything else seemed futile. And though she looked something of herself again, Sansa stared back at a stranger in the mirror, a fraud and a fake; a girl who couldn’t even tell a convincing lie but would now have to shelter a dark secret for the rest of her life.

Out of the bathroom, an icy blast of air prickled Sansa’s skin and bid goosebumps to ravage her arms. She climbed into jeans and a cap-sleeved t-shirt and pulled her heavy leather bag from a shelf in the closet. When she tossed it to the center of the bed, Sansa scrutinized it.

The old thing had had its purpose. When she left home, she’d packed it to the gills, her heart soaring with hope. She’d frantically filled it back up when she fled Kansas City. Here she was once more—packing the leather bag; back on the road in search of something, freedom from guilt perhaps; not knowing when she’d be home again.

She didn’t have any sadness left to spare for her situation, so Sansa quietly stacked her clothes on the bed with purposeful precision. In the backdrop, Sandor fussed with the laundry, cursed the coffee maker that was apparently giving him trouble, and periodically wandered into the bedroom to embrace her from behind and deliver a flurry of kisses against her neck and cheek.

Sansa had already packed her leather bag and was halfway through packing another when Sandor ambled in again. Though he’d never cop to it, she knew by how his mouth twitched and the mindless way he swung his arms in front and behind him that he was getting antsy. The floorboard had been creaking beneath his feet as he paced down the clock in the living room.

“You planning to stay forever?” Sandor quipped and sunk to the edge of the bed. Sansa stood between his legs and rested her hands on his shoulders.

She ran her fingers through his hair, starting at the roots where she scratched at his scalp, and then through the length. Sandor closed his eyes with a pleasured hum and his hands tightened on her hips. She admired his handsome features and the stubble she wasn’t used to seeing.

“What if I am?” Sansa countered through a honeyed smile because forever with him was all she really wanted and the thought of losing it would undo her, so she cast that terrible thought aside.

“I won’t be offended,” Sandor chuckled and smiled with love pouring in through the way he looked at her, the words he said, his hands tracing the shape of her body. “I think I’d be more offended if you weren’t planning on forever.”

Sansa bit her bottom lip and dropped her eyes between them. She felt heat spread across her cheeks. “Is that a proposal?”

With a gruff laugh emanating softly from his throat, Sandor craned his neck and captured Sansa’s lips in a deep and languid kiss.

“Just about,” he murmured and yanked her closer to him. “You made all that fuss about a ring, little bird. Don’t go changing your tune on me now.”

He patted her ass and stood from the bed with a knowing smirk that sheltered more secrets. Sansa’s stomach fluttered with unexpected butterflies. He talked a big game about her being his wife and the anticipation crept back in now, though she wouldn’t push it. She was a lady and ladies didn’t chase after marriage proposals, especially not at a time like this.

Sansa zipped up her other bag and rolled to her toes to kiss Sandor on the cheek.

He responded with a smile and said, “I’ll take these to the truck and then we should get going.”

He grabbed up both bags, and Sansa scanned the room for anything she might’ve missed.

“Oh, before I forget,” Sandor began and stopped beneath the doorframe as he turned over his shoulder at her. “You still have the flask in your jacket?”

“Yeah,” Sansa replied and followed him down the hall and into the living room. “I’ll fetch it.”

With her bags tossed over his shoulder, Sandor placed his Stetson on his head, tipped his hat to her with a wink that elicited Sansa’s giggles, and carried her bags out the front door.

In the coat closet, Sansa flipped through the hangers to the back where the bomber jacket hung and rummaged in its large pocket. Her fingers were met with empty gum wrappers and a few coins. Her hand sunk into the other pocket. Empty; nothing but satin lining. _No. No, that’s not right. I put it in there._

Sansa ripped the jacket from the hanger and groped the pockets again. Surely, she’d just misplaced it. Still empty. She tore open the jacket and jabbed the inside pocket. Gone. The flask was gone. _It’s just misplaced. That’s all._

With a sharp shock of panic, Sansa fell to her knees and tossed aside random pairs of shoes from the closet floor. She dug past umbrellas and stacks of old newspapers, hoping like hell the flask had fallen from the pocket, but only uncovered dust bunnies. Sansa hopped to her feet and hurried down the hall with her heart pounding a wild rhythm in her chest.

In the bedroom, her eyes darted over the dresser. She ripped through drawers and searched beneath the bed, anywhere it might’ve fallen, but her dread reached a fever pitch when she heard the front door open and the familiar footfalls of Sandor coming down the hall.

He stopped mid-stride when he entered the room, his eyes widening and smile disappearing as he gaped at Sansa.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” he demanded.

Sansa gulped down a heavy breath. Her hands shook and her eyes had gone bleary with emergent tears.

“I did something really bad,” she admitted on a tremulous whisper, and what it lacked in volume it made up for with preemptive contrition that thickened her words and stuck in her throat. 

“Whatever it is, it can’t be much worse than last night,” Sandor consoled and took tentative steps towards her. 

“The flask. I can’t find it,” Sansa confessed and before she could get the rest out Sandor halted his advance. She watched the color drain from his face. “It was in my jacket pocket last night, but it’s gone now. I looked in the closet. I…”

An apology died on Sansa’s tongue as Sandor pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes with a sigh. His other hand settled on his hip.

“Shit,” he seethed and, without another word, tore down the hall and to the coat closet. Sansa hurried after him and watched as he retraced her steps, right down to the slow-rolling horror that surfaced on his face when he found the jacket pockets empty.

“I’ll check the truck,” he muttered, his skin ashen. “You keep looking here.”

With the storm door slamming behind him, Sandor barreled down the walkway and quickly disappeared from Sansa’s view.

She tore up the bedroom, places the flask couldn’t possibly be, but she looked anyway. She ripped through the kitchen, still reeking of bleach but she didn’t care now. It seemed petty and paled in comparison to the horror that’d landed at her feet.

Gone. It was gone.

The more she looked, the less she found, and the realization sunk in like a crushing weight against her chest that stole her breath. Tears spilled down her cheeks that burned hot now. Her heart skipped a beat when the front door opened but, by the way Sandor stepped in, pallid and solemnly shaking his head, Sansa knew what it meant.

The knowledge passed between them—the only other place it might be—and ushered forth a new wave of gut-wrenching dread. Sansa buried her face in her palms and a sudden sob escaped her. No sooner than it had, Sandor wrapped her up in his arms and cradled her against his chest. His hands smoothed down her back and through her hair and, when her muttered apology dissolved into more tears, he demanded she take it back. It wasn’t her fault.

When she calmed enough to speak again, he let her go and his jaw set firm as he stared at the wall to his left, lost in thought and looking fearful for perhaps the first time since this whole ordeal began.

“What do we do?” Sansa breathed and chewed her bottom lip. Her head swam and vision blurred at the edges again with more tears.

Sandor rested both hands on his hips and turned to her. He wrestled with the truth. She could see it in him—the way he hesitated, the uncertainty behind his eyes, and the reluctance when he finally spoke.

“We have to go back and find it. On the way out of town, we’ll stop there and look for it.” 

The inarguable truth hit the floor between them, immutable and unyielding. There was no circumventing it and hoping for the best. They’d have to face it head-on. Sansa could accept it at face value, but she too frantically scanned through alternatives, each less promising than the last.

“There’s no other option,” Sandor insisted when Sansa fell silent. He paced with rising agitation that accelerated his already ragged breaths. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, Sansa, it’s got my last name on it. It’s like leaving a goddamn calling card at a crime scene.”

“What if it’s in the hole?” she speculated haltingly, afraid to even voice the possibility.

Sandor stopped pacing. He hadn’t thought about that, she knew. His face paled again, and he gnawed his bottom lip.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he grumbled and cast his gaze behind Sansa’s shoulder and towards the kitchen, as if seeing something Sansa could already sense behind her—heavy, dark, and sinister.

When she turned to look, nothing was there, just an empty kitchen with dead energy; a void where it once used to hold a lightness. Now it seemed infested with the presence of something unnatural and evil. The hair on her arms stood on end and the air buzzed with abnormal pressure.

“Let’s go,” Sandor whispered and, when he took her hand, he squeezed gently but with eerie urgency. “It’s not good for us to be here right now.”

She didn’t argue and could see by whatever came over him that his instincts were on high alert once more. Danger teemed on the horizon and Sandor issued an unspoken warning—they better not be here when it came. Whatever _it_ was, Sansa didn’t know and didn’t ask about what had just come over him.

Instead, she turned off the lights, drew all the blinds shut, and locked the front door behind her. They hurried to Sandor’s truck and Sansa scanned the street with sudden paranoia that they were being watched. Prying eyes were normally nothing more than an annoyance, but now it felt like an intrusion or the deliberate revelation of the secret she and Sandor shared. 

She had hardly closed the passenger door and buckled her seat belt when Sandor backed out of her driveway and peeled down the empty street where a squall had apparently ripped through with the storm. He navigated around fallen tree limbs and through muddy mounds where the storm surge had receded and left disturbed earth behind.

Through town and down the country road, Sandor closely monitored his speed, but his jaw clenched, and his body held tense rigidity that Sansa knew well enough was a product of mounting distress. She felt it too. She fidgeted in her seat, crossing and uncrossing her legs, and issued intermittent sighs. The journey dragged on forever, it seemed.

As they headed down the long stretch of country road leading to the gravel offshoot, Sandor scrutinized his rearview mirror. No one followed. In fact, they hadn’t even passed another car since they rolled out of town. What little comfort Sansa sought to gain from that was short-lived and slipped through her fingers before she could even hold on to it.

Sandor slowed his speed as they approached the narrow gravel road and the path overgrown with trees and shrubbery. It should have been empty. It was innocuous amongst the landscape riddled with other gravel roads, tree groves, and open fields just like it. No one could have found it.

No one except whoever had parked their car at the end of the gravel path. The front end of a hearse-like black station wagon stuck out from the greenery.

“Oh fuck,” Sandor breathed with horrid disbelief and slammed on the accelerator. The heel of his hand collided against the steering wheel in one hard hit. “Goddamn it!”

“What? What is it?” Sansa shot up in her seat and swiveled around towards the gravel path growing smaller in the rear window as Sandor sped down the road. “Who was that?”

He said nothing; only shook his head and muttered something to himself as his eyes darted across the road with dazed bewilderment stealing all his words.

“I know that car,” he finally said, and his eyes snapped to the rearview mirror. He gripped the steering wheel so hard Sansa saw the white of his knuckles.

She turned to him and cast an imploring stare, waiting in suspense for him to say something; any explanation for what they’d just encountered.

“Sandor, who was that?” Sansa demanded to snap him out of the horrified trance he’d found himself in.

He ran one hand over his face and tried to regulate his breaths, but his words came strained and thin.

“The day we had our picnic, I saw that car when they fetched the Mormont girl from the creek bed.” Sandor shifted a panicked glance at her and slowly shook his head. For the first time, Sansa observed genuine and unbridled fear in him. Earlier, he might’ve tried to hide it for her sake, but there was no trying now.

“It’s a cop, Sansa. It’s a fucking cop.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and for all the continued support! I love to hear what you all think, so feel free to drop a comment! Please stay safe out there.


	19. Can't You See

The phone rang.

_Not now._

Everything tightened. Her thighs crushed against his hips, the friction of skin against skin. His hands cinched her waist. His jaw clenched, teeth cutting into his bottom lip. Her perfectly warm and soaking wet pussy was tight around his cock fully sheathed inside her. She liked that. Something about how he invaded, consumed, dominated, even when she was in control of the rhythm.

He fondled one breast, rolled the nipple, and his thumb swiped her clit. She liked that too. Sansa ground against his touch. Both sets of pink lips parted—up above with each gasp and down below wrapped around his shaft.

Lost in the lush sensations, Sandor’s eyes softly shut, and his vision was nothing more than a gauzy vignette. All that muted delicacy deceived because waves of pleasure battered him now. It left him dizzy. It left him reeling. It disarmed him of all his faculties other than the surmounting pressure between his legs with every sensuous roll of Sansa’s hips.

The phone rang a second time.

Or was it a third? Maybe a fourth. He stopped counting. Someone was determined to infiltrate his ecstatic haze. The noise slipped into the backdrop of entranced delirium.

“No, just let it go,” Sansa panted. She pressed her palms firmly against his chest and rode him harder, as if he might toss her off in a moment like this to get the damn phone.

He managed only a guttural groan. It emanated from the back of his throat and his eyes roved over her body—full tits bouncing, the nipples hard buds; her knees sinking further apart; his cock glistening from her first climax when he fucked her hard from behind; her head thrown back with a beautiful cascade of red hair; skin damp with sweat.

“I’m so close,” she confessed to the ceiling. The flush of wetness and the pulsing around his cock had already given her away. He bucked his hips to meet her movements, to send her over the edge and maybe he’d go tumbling after.

They rocked together in synchronous unison, the perfect communion of body and soul, and when he sat up, it wasn’t to prolong the pleasure but to have her nearer and to swallow up her moans as she came. Sandor wrapped his arms around her. One hand gripped her ass and guided the rhythm because she’d abandoned the cause as her peak surged.

His lips crashed into hers. His tongue slipped into her mouth as she cried out her release. She melted in his arms with gorgeous glee—all soft breaths and sweet smiles—and her body went limp like a rag doll. Quiet little pants issued from her mouth, but she still pressed a tender kiss to his lips and laced her fingers in his hair.

Just as Sandor thought she’d forgotten about him, Sansa lifted a delicate hand to his bare chest that still heaved and was slick with sweat. She gave a lady-like push—hard enough for him to know what she demanded, but gentle enough to not offend, as if he’d be offended. He liked it rough sometimes—slap her ass, pull her hair, pin her to the bed, fuck her into the mattress. She did too, but this wasn’t one of those times. Rock hard and still inside of her, he needed release, however it manifested.

“You lay back, my love,” she muttered. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

Of course, she would.

Sansa always lavished her thoughtful and doting affection on him with everything she did—big and small, grand and simple. Her love was a rare combination of fierce and warmhearted; the mix just right and all he needed.

Sandor did as he was bid and sunk back against the pillow with his arms propped behind his head. Sansa eased herself off of him and dipped between his legs where his cock stood at attention. She took him into her mouth, not minding one bit the taste of herself as she sucked tentatively and slow at first. Sandor gathered up her hair in one hand and cast a heavy-lidded gaze down at her. Her thick lashes rested beneath closed eyes and her cheeks flushed pink.

She undid him with the supple way her lips encircled his tip and her tongue flicked and swirled there. She sucked and stared up at him. He liked to watch; all her girlish softness and feminine allure remained, but she’d take him in her mouth on her hands and knees and look up at him like she did now. Sultry and self-assured, she loved it—his cock in her mouth; his hands in her hair; his balls in her palm. She wasn’t such a good girl. Good girls wouldn’t let him do the things he did to her.

Sandor’s senses overwhelmed once more, and he closed his eyes. He imbibed on the rapture sweeping over. He surrendered to it. She could have it all; all of him, anything and everything she ever wanted. He was hers and she fucking knew it too.

His jaw clenched. Sansa increased her speed and her hand circled his shaft and joined her mouth to make up the difference. His ragged breaths thickened to groans now, each louder than the last and rising in cadence along with the bliss blazing through him. He’d gladly die by that sweet fire.

Overcome, he sat up and sent her up too, her blue eyes wide but not for fear or concern. They danced with desire, anticipation at whatever it was he had in store. And what he had in store she must’ve intuited and did so with a wicked smile. Sandor tossed her to her back and straddled her ribcage, one knee on either side of her chest. He loomed above her, his dick in hand and the tip brushing against her lips. 

“Spit,” he commanded on a deep rumble and she obeyed. Sometimes she was a good girl.

He eased back enough that his slick shaft landed between her breasts and she pushed them together to cradle his cock. Sandor thrust between her perfect tits he swore were made for this act. He buried himself between their fullness. She was looking at him again. With each thrust, she bit her bottom lip and swiped at her own nipples as he loomed above her, staring down at her and picking up the rhythm until he went dry again. When he did, Sandor took himself in hand and tapped the tip of his cock at her lips.

“Suck,” he groaned and, though it was another command, he didn’t have to command anything.

Sansa propped herself up on her elbows and took him in her mouth again with renewed vigor. She moaned, and the vibration brought on a wave of pleasure that’d take him under. Her tongue swirled against his shaft. Sometimes she was a very good girl.

“Goddamn,” he seethed and cupped the back of her head. With a little nudge, he encouraged her to take more of him in her mouth. “Harder, baby.”

She hummed again, and he watched her cheeks hollow and her eyes shut as she approached the task with eagerness he hadn’t yet seen, lost in her own rhythm as she gripped his shaft and sucked hard with each bob of her head.

“Good girl,” he moaned. She liked to be told. He swept the pad of his thumb across her cheekbone. “You love it, don’t you?”

She exhaled a laugh and maybe tried to nod, but his encouragement paid off. She found the right pressure and rhythm. Her tongue worked its magic. She knew what she was doing.

The pleasure shored up. Everything tightened again. Sandor tugged on her hair. He thrust his hips. The climax blindsided with intensity. Sansa kept her rhythm until the very end, relentless and perfect. He cried out her name, roared his release, pulsed in her mouth. He’d surely die this way. It was fine by him.

In the aftermath, Sandor’s chest heaved and, with his eyes shut and face buried in his palms, he was faintly aware that Sansa had released him. He collapsed to the mattress. His body buzzed. His mind was blank. His limbs were numb, legs tingling.

Sansa sat up next to him with a self-satisfied smile that rivaled the joy she garnered from her own climax. Her tongue licked the corner of her mouth that curled devilishly, and she hummed a little _mmm_ at the taste of him.

Sandor reached up and brushed his fingers through her mussed-up hair. He admired her in the early afternoon light spilling through the window. It illuminated her in subtle golds and caught the fire of her hair and the piercing blue of her eyes. She leaned into his touch.

“You’re gonna be the death of me, you know that?” he muttered on a heavy, rasping voice, still faintly out of breath.

Sansa flashed an innocent smile, but bit her bottom lip, playing at coy and failing so beautifully. She rolled to the other side of the bed. From the nightstand, she retrieved her water glass and sipped from it.

“I know nothing about that,” she replied, just a tantalizing murmur.

Sandor expelled a rumbling chuckle and gave her a pointed look. “That’s a lie if I ever heard one. You know what you’re doing, and I’ve got your number.”

“I’d say you’ve got more than that,” Sansa quipped and crawled back to his side, but rose to her knees and gazed down at him.

Sandor grinned and propped himself up on his elbow. He reached forward, gripped the back of her thigh, and tugged her closer until his mouth met the juncture of her legs. His tongue parted her soaked lips, tracing her slit and circling her opening. He sucked gently on her clit until she sighed.

“Yes, I do,” he whispered and placed a kiss between her legs. When he matched her eyes, he gave a wink. “And don’t you forget it.”

In the tranquil comedown from burning passion, Sandor laid back down and closed his eyes. He reached for Sansa and guided her to lie down next to him. She curled up against his side and tossed one leg over his thigh. Sandor kissed her forehead and one hand smoothed up and down her back.

Against his skin, he could feel the warmth and wetness between her legs. She wanted more. She was so wet. If he wasn’t so spent, it would’ve stoked his desire and he’d gladly oblige, but they’d already been at it all morning. He smiled when Sansa dotted kisses against his scarred cheek, her perfect lips finding something worthy in the imperfect mess of burned flesh.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” she whispered in his ear, the invitation clear.

Sandor cracked his eyes open and stared up at her as he brushed his hand through her hair. He pulled her towards him until their lips met. His tongue swept into her mouth and he kissed her—deep, loving, and sensuous. When Sansa sat up, her lips were swollen and pink from kissing, so incredibly alluring, right along with the rest of her as she climbed from the bed.

“I’m gonna wait for my soul to return to my body,” he japed with a chuckle. “But you might see me in there, and maybe I’ll finish what I started.”

Sansa lifted a brow at him, and he admired the shape of her naked body; all her curves, beautiful and feminine. “Oh, yeah?”

“I told you before—I don’t need an excuse to bury my face between your legs,” he teased and licked his bottom lip. “And maybe I wanna lick that sweet little ass of yours too.”

A blush and then a bright smile bloomed on Sansa’s face. “I eagerly await the rendezvous then.”

Sandor soaked in the sound of her cheerful laughter as Sansa padded into the hall and then the bathroom. He rolled to his side and glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Noon. He sighed into his palms. _Where the fuck has the time gone?_

Sansa had woken him up just after dawn with her fingers sweeping beneath the top sheet and to his dick already half-hard. If it’d been for anything else, he would’ve had more than a few words to say about being woken up so early. But she’d taken him in her mouth, wide awake and gazing up at him, so she’d obviously been contemplating his wake-up call for some time. It didn’t matter. He’d sleep when he was dead, and Sansa was intent on doing him in with divine pleasure like he’d never known.

Sandor had come hard enough to send him back to sleep until he woke up sometime later with the shameful knowledge that he’d left her unsatisfied. He didn’t know if she’d been asleep too. That didn’t matter either. He disappeared beneath the sheets, gently coaxed her legs open, and delved between them. She was already drenched as his tongue traipsed between her folds. Her heat met his lips, and he savored her taste until she sang a sweet song for him.

And that began a marathon morning where neither seemed to be able to get enough of the other, and it wasn’t for a lack of trying. He could fuck her on the hour, every hour, and still fantasize about her at a half-past. Though it pained him to do so, Sandor would have to hoist up the white flag and cede this victory to the little bird humming merrily in the bathroom now.

That red-haired beauty had laid waste to him and left him staring up at the ceiling in heavenly catatonia while she pranced off like some ethereal being. He’d met his match and the coy look she’d tossed over her shoulder on the way to the bathroom said she knew it too. _Damn._

In the two weeks that’d passed, he and Sansa had rediscovered normalcy or the closest they were likely to come to it. Still, it was misshapen at the edges and cumbersome to reclaim. As time stretched behind them, the awful memories grew smaller in the rearview and someday the horizon would swallow it up completely, or so Sandor consoled her.

Did he believe it for himself? Maybe. If it was a farce, it still felt like a dream. He woke in the mornings with her tucked against his side. She sent him off to work with whispered affections and honeyed smiles. He came home to her cooking and baking up a storm, singing along to the record player, and he’d sit at the kitchen table, drunk on the depths of all he felt for her and engrossed in love-struck reverie.

Would it last forever? He wasn’t a foolish man and, though his heart begged for this to be the end state, his instincts knew better. His wants were simple. He’d never ask for more than what he had now—a job, a place to live, and a woman like Sansa pouring all her love into him. Yet some force beyond him seemed hellbent on designating it all too much and Sandor couldn’t quite shake the feeling that, while he and Sansa were leaving one catastrophe behind, they were racing towards another.

The phone blared again from down the hall; the shrill insistence too much to ignore. Sandor shot from bed and ripped off the top sheet with gusto he didn’t know he had left in him. As he tore down the hall, he wrapped the sheet around his waist in some odd move towards decency; perhaps an effort to armor himself against whoever demanded his attention. In the kitchen, he snatched the phone from the wall and pressed it hard to his ear.

“Yeah,” he huffed on an agitated breath.

After a moment of halting trepidation, Bronn’s strained voice drifted through, worry veritably seeping through the receiver.

“Sandor.”

He rested with his back against the wall, and the phone cord wrapped around him.

“Hey man,” he mumbled. His mind sifted through the causes for concern. He wasn’t scheduled to work until later tonight, and Bronn had been in good spirits during last night’s shift.

“I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” Bronn chided on a heavy sigh. 

“So that was you. I was…uh…” Sandor paused and glanced down the hall to the bedroom. “…occupied,” he finished on a quiet laugh.

Bronn didn’t return the mirth. He didn’t cut some ribald joke or attaboy. Instead, he cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “This is serious,” he muttered. “Can you talk?”

Sandor stilled and his back peeled from the wall. He stood at attention despite his years out of the service.

“Yeah, what’s going on?” he pressed as regret bloomed in the empty pit of his stomach; the thought that Bronn might be in some kind of tangle and Sandor had ignored the persistent calls.

“You tell me,” Bronn scoffed, but not for preemptive judgement. The man sounded utterly bewildered and distressed, both sentiments unusual for him. “The cops came to the bar looking for you, said they wanted to ask you some questions and asked if I knew where you were. They said they’d called you at home, even swung by your house. I told them you’re out of town.”

A chill overcame Sandor as if submerged in ice water. He froze and his mouth went dry. He couldn’t manage words enough to summon a response. It didn’t matter. His mind raced and heart rose in an awful beat. While he’d willfully ignored the phone calls, Sandor couldn’t remember the doorbell ringing or knocks pounding.

Then there was the other bit; whatever inspired Bronn to cover for him. The man had street smarts in spades that meant he wouldn’t have done that except by some instinct that urged discretion. Sandor didn’t ask what that instinct was. Instead, he pressed the phone harder to his ear and regulated his breaths that came rapid, almost a pant.

“Cops? Was Griff there?” he asked with deluded hope.

“No.” Bronn paused as if he were about to divulge more details but thought the better of it. When he spoke again, he lowered his voice once more. “That’s the other thing. These weren’t small-town cops. It was the Texas Rangers and the fucking feds, Sandor. The FBI.”

The kitchen chair barely caught Sandor’s weight with the awkward way he slumped into it. Plunged in a daze, horror swept over him. His blood ran cold, and the room took on shadows it hadn’t possessed mere moments ago.

“Shit,” was all Sandor could muster.

With his elbows digging into his knees, his palm cradled his forehead and he closed his eyes. He felt storm-battered; everything suddenly whipped into a frenzy inside of him and at tremendous odds with the way Sansa sang so beautifully in the shower. 

Sandor fell silent as death. Bronn spoke again, slow as if he were selecting his words with careful precision.

“I know something is going on and it’s best that we don’t get into it on the line, but this is some serious shit. These people—”

“What else did they say?” Sandor interjected. In the vacant spaces not yet ravaged by fear, anger took hold.

“Not much. I tried to ask questions, but they weren’t sparing details. They just said that they needed to talk to you and Sansa, something about a missing person. They showed me a picture and asked if I knew anything.”

Sandor flew from the chair that wobbled on its legs. He paced the kitchen in pounding steps. “What did he look like?”

Bronn descended into another bout of infuriating silence, and Sandor almost asked again with far less patience until Bronn finally spoke up.

“It wasn’t a ‘he’. Remember that blonde girl who came in with her friends the night Sansa showed up at the bar? The one who’d been making eyes at you?”

That seemed a lifetime ago. Sandor retraced the memories back to that night and found that blonde-haired girl in his recollections only because she’d inspired some jealousy in Sansa, ladylike and subtle though it was.

“Yeah,” Sandor said with a questioning inflection on the end.

“That girl turned up dead a few miles from here. She left the bar that night in her own car and no one saw her again. Other than her friends, you and Sansa were the last people to see her alive.”

Sandor ceased his pacing and stood in wild disbelief at the center of the kitchen and let the sheet fall to the floor with no mind for his nakedness now. The trouble brewing had Sandor’s name on it, and he could at least prepare himself for the expected form it might take, but this detail threatened to upend him.

Joffrey. He’d been there that night—stalking from the corner, watching and waiting, and with apparent bloodlust. The only problem—putting the cops on Joffrey’s scent meant sending them after a dead man; one who’d perished by Sandor’s own hand.

“Fuck,” he breathed into the phone. 

“They’re looking for someone else too,” Bronn spoke with tepid reserve. The change in his demeanor was unsettling. “Someone from Kansas City; one of those big shots from an oil family. They can’t seem to find him either.”

Sandor assumed the silence now, and not for a lack of words. He had plenty to spare, most of them cursing whatever force in the universe got off on seeing him tumble and fall in the miserable horde. Repeatedly, Sandor scaled that horrid pit in some ill-fated attempt to better himself and his prospects, only to be knocked down again. 

Bronn filled the awful quiet with yet another disastrous bit of information. “They showed me a picture of him, the guy who’s missing. I recognized him. He was at the bar that night too.”

“What did you tell them?” Anger on the rise, Sandor’s fingers curled to his palms. His nails dug into the skin hard enough to leave marks.

“The truth; that I saw him, that he’d come into the bar the same night as that girl. I assume he didn’t stay long. He was gone when you and Sansa left to talk.”

“You told them Sansa was there that night too?” Sandor pressed.

“Yeah,” Bronn replied on a slow breath, heavy with the weight of understanding that seemed to blossom in him now. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

All Sandor could really do was laugh, and so he did—derisive and snarling and as far from joy as one could get.

“It fucking looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Okay, listen, I don’t need details, but the writing is on the wall, Sandor. You’re a smart man. You know it too. I think you and Sansa need to take a little trip out of town. I don’t get a good feeling about any of this. They were not happy that I hadn’t heard from you. Apparently, they also made a stop in Devil Creek to look for Sansa. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to, but I suggest you make some arrangements.”

Bronn’s advice came with disturbing insistence and left no margin for Sandor to argue. Some part of him knew the man was right; the same part that felt something ominous gather on the fringe of the sanctuary he and Sansa had crafted together. It was sacrosanct, and it was theirs alone, but something awful encroached on it now. Sandor’s throat burned, and he swallowed hard against the sensation.

“We can leave temporarily, but I’m not uprooting myself because you’ve got a bad feeling,” Sandor rejected in some desperate bid to defend what little peace he’d claimed. Like a sapling in a storm, it wasn’t likely to survive despite all his efforts to shelter it.

Bronn sighed, not quite resigned but reaching the end of his rope and the frustration frayed his voice.

“Look, Father Bill owes me a big favor. I wasn’t gonna cash it in until I really needed it, but you’re my best friend and this ain’t just a feeling, Sandor. I know how this shit works—the authorities are under the gun to solve whatever’s been going on with these missing and dead girls. It’s been months now and they don’t have so much as a lead. You really wanna take the fall for that because they’re ready to lock someone away and be done with it?”

Bronn’s words landed with undeniable heft and squarely at Sandor’s feet, the ball in his court, though he didn’t have much say in how this was apt to unfurl. The uncertainty left his stomach in knots.

“Leave and head south,” Bronn urged. “When you get as far as you can, call me and by then I will have worked something out with Father Bill. Okay?”

“Okay,” was all Sandor said, disoriented from the reality. He didn’t know how to live with the weight of it, much less how to respond.

“Be safe and we’ll talk soon,” Bronn mumbled before hanging up.

The line went dead. Sandor still held the phone to his ear, unable to move. He forced himself out of the fog but found only a gnawing and insurmountable sense of urgency waiting for him on the other side. He slammed the phone back to the cradle and snatched the sheet from the floor.

Not one step into the living room, the storm door opened. Sandor heard the metal rattle, a thud as the glass met a body that propped it open, and a fist pounding at the front door.

The world caved in on him. Senses acute, he eyed the door and swallowed hard. He carefully wrapped the sheet around his waist. A tattered breath passed his lips. Blood running cold and mouth dry, he eyed the bathroom where Sansa’s hair dryer wailed.

Straddling the divide between the kitchen and the living room, Sandor waited. His heart pounded in his chest. Another knock nearly sent it through the roof.

_Ignore it._

It wouldn’t be ignored. More knocking, more insistence, intent to drive him mad. His fingers curled to his palms. Sweat beaded his brow. He licked his bottom lip. With a step into the living room, the floorboard creaked, and the knocking stopped. _They heard. They know I’m here._

Muffled voices issued from the other side. _Fuck._

His mind raced through options—ignore it, answer, face the music, run—but he was trapped; trapped in his own fucking home, cornered. The unknown would taunt him, so Sandor eased towards the door; one foot carefully placed in front of the other and the carpet’s thick pile muffling his steps.

He reached the door, pressed his palms to the wood, and peered through the peephole. An old couple stood on the other side, both staring straight at Sandor, it seemed. He unlocked the door and flung it open.

In a rumpled black suit, the old man stared up at him through pale eyes. Beneath thin wisps of white hair, age spots dotted his scalp that was a ghostly pallor. The woman looked just as decrepit and gazed straight ahead, almost entranced and one skeletal hand gripping the man’s.

“Sir, might you have a moment to hear the word of the Lord?” the man implored on a rattling voice, the kind that comes near death.

“No.” Horrified, Sandor stepped away from the door and began to push it shut, but the man’s hand flew up. The strength behind the counterforce surprised Sandor. It was enough to stop it from being slammed in the old man’s face.

“It’s not too late to repent and accept Jesus Christ into your heart,” the man protested and held up his raggedy bible with its swollen pages and busted binding.

“Get the fuck off my porch,” Sandor seethed and scanned the street, suddenly aware that others may be watching. “I won’t tell you again.”

Though blind, the woman’s milky eyes snapped to Sandor, and she hurled her words on a wavering voice and lifted a crooked finger.

“God knows the evil you’ve done, what goes on in this house of fornication and death.”

His heart raced again. They were drawing attention, making a scene. Sandor’s eyes darted along the street, peering for anything out of the ordinary.

“The only thing that’s dead is your God,” he grumbled and slammed the door shut.

“Murder!” the woman howled on the other side.

Sandor slumped against the door and listened to them shuffle away, the hum of their car’s engine, and the tires crackle against pavement as they departed.

Jesus freaks annoyed him on most days. The Bible Belt was full of them—their roadside stands peddling gospel and dusty knickknacks; crosses, big and small and always dirty, dotting the freeways and country roads alike; the entire heartland sickening with the decaying stink of religion and the false promise of God’s grace.

It was a sham, he knew. On a good day, he’d chalk up this run-in as an embarrassing and bizarre attempt at proselytizing to a lifelong sinner; a lost cause if there ever was one. Today wasn’t a good day. The shadows crept in again; falling along the kitchen, seeping across the floor, and closing in on him.

Unnerved, Sandor barreled down the hall. The instinct to flee rose like a violent tide in him, the prelude to a storm and danger surging. Time, he needed time. Time to do what, he wasn’t sure. Sort this out? He’d landed in a mess and the stakes were too high. Make up a lie? He’d derided liars often enough that he’d be damned if he became one too. Sansa was perceptive and she’d discern half-truths, so Sandor wouldn’t bother with that either.

In the bedroom, he threw on underwear and climbed into his jeans that laid crumpled on the floor. With his back to the bedroom door, Sandor adjusted his belt buckle as he heard Sansa emerge from the bathroom and breeze into the bedroom. The scent of her shampoo and soap followed her in, along with her sweet little hums. The combination left him gutted as he stared down the cruel prospect of having it all ripped from him.

From behind, she snaked her arms around his middle and pressed her cheek to his bare back. Sandor patted her hand in an awkward rhythm and his body stiffened, though he willed it not to. He’d let her in. She was a part of him, but some defense against the inevitable heartache set in now. Sandor shrugged her off and paced across the bedroom to his dresser.

He didn’t meet her eyes as he ripped open the top drawer and plucked out the first t-shirt he saw. He pulled it over his head but was keenly aware of Sansa staring at him. In his periphery, she stood silent and still in the center of the bedroom. He sat at the edge of the bed and she watched him tug his boots on his feet. She approached in slow steps but hovered a few feet away.

“What is it?” Sansa asked, her words drawn out as if all that hesitation might soften a blow she sensed was coming.

Sandor delivered that blow matter-of-factly and shot from the bed. “I’m taking you back to Devil Creek.”

He knew he’d become frigid, rendered to stone and impassible now. For her part, Sansa took up the heat with a fire that seemed to burn through her.

“What?” she gasped, already breathless, and they’d only just begun down this path, one he hadn’t accounted for and had been a fool not to. “No! Why?”

She darted after him as Sandor moved about the room and occupied his trembling hands with tidying up. He could do less about the way his heart raced as he snatched up a pair of socks from the floor. Sansa tried to reach for him, but Sandor wrenched away and tossed the socks in the laundry hamper.

An outsider looking in would rightly peg him as an insensitive asshole. Inside, he was coming apart. A landslide, everything fell to pieces, and he watched helplessly as it drifted away. She probably believed his unwillingness to acknowledge her presence was meant to hurt her. In reality, it was just another artifact of trying to keep himself together. If he looked at her now, he’d lose his resolve. Sandor stopped and stared at the tips of his boots.

“It’s the right thing to do,” he said firm enough to believe it himself.

They’d indulged in the easy parts of love—the stuff of stories and songs—unbridled passion and midnight confessions whispered with kisses and galvanized in touches.

These were the hard parts, the ones never exalted because the pain was ugly, the process bitter, and progress not promised at the end. All his life, he’d guarded against what he felt was the inevitable fall. What he hadn’t accounted for was bringing it down by his own hand for the good of another. Love meant sacrifice, sometimes painful and sometimes irrevocable. He should’ve known.

_It’s the right thing to do,_ Sandor reminded himself again before finally meeting her eyes.

Sansa clutched the towel. It wrapped tight around her and strained against each heaving breath she took. Tears brimmed in her eyes and her skin flushed red in blotches across her cheeks, down her neck, and even further down her chest.

“Why are you doing this?” she whimpered, a heartbreaking plea. The tears broke free and streamed down her cheeks. “Who was that on the phone?”

Sandor’s fingers twitched with the indelible urge to wrap her up and hold on for dear fucking life. It’d only hurt more to have to let go again.

“Bronn. Federal law enforcement is looking for me.” A wave of nausea overcame him, strong enough that he paused with the dizziness that followed in its wake. He fixed his gaze to the wall behind her. “It’s about a missing girl and your shit-stain ex.”

Sansa licked at the tears rolling over her lips. Fear rendered her speechless, and her skin paled in such an unusual way. It blotted out the red, and she looked as if she’d seen Death itself sweep through the room. She shook her head as more tears spilled down her cheeks.

“I’m not going back there. Not without you. We already agreed on this. We are in it together.”

Of course, she wouldn’t make this easy. She wouldn’t quietly slip back into her life, bid him goodbye, and concede that this was for the best. She loved hard and Sandor knew that better than anyone and something in the irony of it all—that he’d find a woman who loved him as she did, without reserve, and with all her might—and he’d have to set her free. The cruel truth shifted something in him. The tides changed and battered a different shore, one of anger and grief.

“Jesus, Sansa!” he snapped with misplaced agitation. “How do you think this is gonna work? We just hole up here for the rest of our lives, constantly look over our shoulders, and wonder when the hammer is gonna drop? I’m not doing that to you! That’s not what you deserve. You deserve to live a normal life free from all this shit.”

He paced again, perhaps with the desire to hide away; to rip the band-aid off so he could lick his wounds that wouldn’t likely heal from this. Sansa gaped at him in devastated disbelief. 

“I’ll drop you off in Devil Creek and turn myself in.” He ran one hand over his face and snatched up his truck keys from the dresser. Something in the symbolic gesture of leaving fire-started Sansa, like dumping kerosene on dying embers.

“No!” she shouted with enough vehemence that Sandor stilled and turned to her. “Absolutely not! I won’t let you do that.”

Sandor tucked the keys into his back pocket and settled his hands on his hips.

“Look, the story is simple,” he reasoned, as much for his own sake as for hers. “It happens all the time. I’m the jealous boyfriend and saw you with your ex. It sent me into a rage, and I murdered him. I forced you here so you wouldn’t go singing to the cops about it. With my record, it’s not a stretch.”

“I’m not doing that.” Angry tears barreled down her cheeks. Sansa firmly shook her head and choked on a gasping breath. “I won’t do that! I’ll tell them the truth.”

“Why are you so goddamn stubborn?” Sandor rumbled with rising agitation, though he felt his will dissolving with each anguished cry that escaped her. “I’m giving you an out! Take it!”

“No!” she cried on a broken exhale and stared at him as if this were the last she might see of him. It was destroying her. “I’m not stubborn. I love you and I don’t care about a normal life if you’re not in it. Why can’t you understand that? You can’t force me to do this. I won’t do this.”

Sansa sunk to the bed and buried her face in her hands. Inconsolable, her back heaved with each sob, but she turned away from him and pulled her legs onto the mattress.

Sandor searched for the answer, but there was no playbook for this. Love wasn’t mechanical. He couldn’t thumb through a manual and find the answer and a way to fix what was broken. He’d always want what was best for her, but the boundaries of what was right shifted and left him free-falling with nothing to hold onto.

It struck him then.

_“You can always hold onto me,”_ Sansa had said, and he recognized now all she meant. They’d weather storms together; this one perhaps the most treacherous. When there was no true north guiding the way, “hold onto me” meant seeking shelter in one another and navigating the path together. Sandor cast his misguided convictions aside, and the blinding light of certainty showed the way. He’d be a fool not to follow it.

He climbed onto the bed and Sansa only cried harder as the mattress dipped beside her with his weight. He reached for her and, God bless her spirit, she didn’t come easy; not until he grabbed her up in both arms and laid her down. Propped up on one elbow, his hand traced her silhouette and he pressed his lips to each of her cheeks.

“Alright now,” he whispered against her mouth and cupped the side of her face. The heat rolling off of her seeped into his palm. “I love you. Come here.”

Sandor laid beside her and held her tight against him. One hand soothed down Sansa’s back and the other cradled the back of her head where his fingers buried in her hair. His lips pressed against hers in a heartfelt kiss.

“I don’t want to do that,” she pled softly and shook her head. “I don’t want to. Please.”

Sandor brushed the hair from her cheek and matched her imploring eyes.

“We won’t,” he consoled. “It’s fine. We won’t do that. It’ll be me and you, together. I’m not going anywhere.”

Awash in relief, Sansa nodded, but more tears came in what he sensed was a release of the frenzy he’d caused. Sandor held her close and rested his chin atop her head as he sheltered her in his arms. Regret lashed into him and it felt like waking up from one of those dreams where he was falling towards the ground from great height. He’d come close to letting her go and giving this all up but snapped out of it just in time. The close call left him chilled to the bone.

Eventually, Sansa stilled in his arms and her breaths came even. Her loving touch traipsed across the fabric of his shirt, and Sandor eased back enough to look at her. Face to face, they gazed at one another. Sansa’s cheeks flushed pink and her eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

“No more tears, my little bird. It’s alright now,” he whispered with as much affection as he could manage. He’d give her the whole world and the fact that she only wanted him still left him dumbfounded in ways. He gripped her hip and closed his eyes as he felt his brows knit together.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m so sorry,” he confessed and felt her warm touch against his cheek. “I don’t know what to do. I have no idea what we’re going to do.”

Just when a great wave of hopelessness threatened to pull him under, she offered her hand and pulled him free.

“Look at me.”

At Sansa’s gentle insistence, Sandor opened his eyes, and he saw the shift in her; the serenity bathing her graceful features, so placid now. Whereas he was wracked with fear and doubts, she’d assumed the calm and spoke with soothing conviction as she gazed at him.

“When I say we’re in this together, that means you are not meant to shoulder all of this alone. This is a partnership and we are a team. That means you have to let me help sometimes. You don’t have to deal with anything all alone anymore. I’m here too, and sometimes I might have the answers if you don’t.”

Mesmerized by her wisdom and inheriting some of her peace, Sandor nodded.

“I just got scared,” he whispered, not easy for a man like him to admit, but he’d tell her all his secrets. “I’m scared, Sansa. And I never want to let you down, so I didn’t know what to do.”

Filled up with warmth, Sansa smiled tenderly at him and her touch—fingertips combing through the hair at his temples—was just as doting.

“Run towards me when you’re scared, darling. Not away.”

She leaned forward and kissed his forehead before settling against the pillow again. Sandor released a breath that washed away the panic and fear in him. It left him tired now. He just wanted to sleep and have this all disappear when he woke.

“What else did Bronn say?” Sansa asked. 

“The cops stopped by the bar. They’re looking for me and were in Devil Creek looking for you.” Sandor paused and lowered his voice. “The girl that was at the bar the night you came in—that blonde girl—she’s dead. Other than her friends, you and I were the last to see her.”

Sansa’s eyes widened, and Sandor watched dread pour over her features. Her mouth hung agape and her skin paled. Her eyes fell too and darted about the space between them, as if chasing after untamed thoughts.

“Okay, but that doesn’t mean they think we had anything to do with it,” Sansa reasoned. “Maybe they just want to ask us questions about what we saw that night.”

“There’s more, though. They know Joffrey was at the bar that night too, and they’re investigating his disappearance. Think about it, Sansa. How does that look? A girl is murdered, and you and I are among the last people to see her alive. The same night your ex shows up at my work and now he’s missing too.”

Her lips pressed together, and she grimaced with the cumbersome truth and all its inconvenience, but Sandor knew she didn’t fully understand its ugliness. He’d seen it before; innocent men put away for crimes they didn’t commit. Their only transgression—being in the wrong place at the wrong time and on the wrong end of sloppy police work.

“We’re the common denominator,” Sansa acknowledged. 

“To the cops, I’m sure,” Sandor agreed but shook his head because something else existed here, reaching from beyond the grave. “But don’t get it twisted. _He_ was the common denominator.”

Sansa swallowed hard and stared at Sandor. Terror filled her up, the same brand he’d seen in her that fateful night when a storm raged and, just as Griff had warned, the devil himself had stalked the shadows.

“He killed that girl,” Sansa whispered on a tremulous breath. “I know he did. The way he looked at me, Sandor.” She shook her head, out of words to describe what she encountered that night. She’d faltered to explain it. All her descriptions painted a picture that was more demonic than human, and perhaps that was apt. “He’s done so many unspeakable things.”

Sandor held her hands and squeezed to bring her back lest she sink in the pit of abject horror again. As it stood, he’d just pulled her out.

“Listen to me, Sansa, we have to leave. And I mean for good. Things are about to get ugly if we stay.”

In the small space between them, Sansa stared plainly at him with fearful eyes, but nodded.

“Where will we go?” she asked.

“South. Mexico maybe. I don’t know,” Sandor said with quiet reserve, hoping that might soften his answer. “Bronn is going to help make arrangements, but we don’t have a lot of time. We need to leave here soon. They’re bound to come looking for us again.”

Sansa licked her bottom lip and dropped her eyes. The weight of reality set in with her, he could tell. Her sadness fled, but a different shade of somber took its place—harder and world-weary.

“When could we come back?” Sansa muttered when she matched his gaze again.

If he had an honest answer to give, he would’ve given it to her gladly. Sandor shook his head and shrugged. The road they’d travel now had no markers for time; even for him it seemed endless and wild, overgrown with uncertainty.

“I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to, but I need you to think about this. I don’t have family or anything to forsake by leaving. You do. If we do this, I don’t know that there’s any coming back from it. Maybe this is all nothing, and it goes away, but I don’t have a good feeling.”

Perhaps he’d already been dead in the water when Sandor talked big about never leaving Texas again. In the very least, he’d break his parole terms, but that prospect paled in comparison to whatever was coming down the pike for him. With her eyes down-turned, Sandor had no window to what rested heavily on Sansa’s mind now but, when she stared at him again, the ferocity in her left him stunned.

“I’m your family.” She lifted a hand to his cheek, perhaps a bid to drive in meaning because the fire dancing in her eyes warned not to fight her on this. “And you’re mine. I’m not leaving you. If anyone tries to tear us apart, they’ll be in for the fight of their life.”

Pride tore through Sandor, an unexpected reprieve from the heaviness that’d enveloped them. Dense as fog, it all felt like stumbling their way through it, desperate for a way out. And like so many other things, Sansa was the one to clear the path with light and love and all the good the world had to offer. It shone through and vanquished the darkness. It seemed awfully bittersweet.

Sandor leaned forward and kissed her. “We better get going.”

Sansa nodded and resolve hardened her features once more—a slight frown and resilience behind her eyes. “Together.” She took his hand and leveled her gaze at him. “I don’t care about the rest. It’s you and I, together.”

“Together,” Sandor agreed with a solemn nod at the pact they now shared and, though it’d been forged in darkness, it’d brought them closer; a partnership built in love and the strength in the ties that bound them, dark secrets and all.

Unlike the measured departure from Devil Creek where Sansa neatly packed her bags and shuttered the house, they left Cactus in chaos. She shoved fistfuls of clothes into her bags, and Sandor did the same. They weaved around one another, shouting out reminders to grab this thing or the other. She remembered the day-to-day necessities of toothbrushes and extra undergarments. He remembered the long term—stacks of cash, bits of silver and gold jewelry that could be traded if the need arose, the title to his truck, the deed to his house.

From the back corner of his dresser drawer, beneath stacks of undershirts, Sandor felt for another necessity of the long game he meant to play. He plucked out the small velveteen box with a simple gold band inside and tucked it into his bag. 

They left dishes in the sink, clothes crumpled on the floor, the newspaper eviscerated across the kitchen table. No reasonable couple would leave their house in this state for a trip out of town. It was incongruent to the cover story, but then again Sandor disabused himself of the notion that he’d ever be back here.

On the way out the door, he took one last look with sentiment he hadn’t accounted for and no time to mourn what he’d leave behind. They hurried to his truck and Sandor felt exposed as he climbed into the driver’s side and fired up the engine. He scanned the street for prying eyes, cars that seemed out of place, anything out of the ordinary. He found nothing of the sort; just the sleepy neighborhood street with old houses and quiet neighbors.

Sandor barreled down the road leading to Cactus’s main drag but cut through side streets to avoid driving through the heart of town. He turned onto the last bit of Main Street that meant he had no other choice but to pass the police station. As he approached it, Sandor glimpsed Griff’s squad car. He wondered what the man might think of him now, what advice he might give in this moment, if he’d be disappointed. The thought stung so Sandor pushed it aside.

Another vehicle came into view parked next to Griff’s—that matte black, hearse-like car.

Madness took hold or perhaps paranoia; the burning fury and frustration at being forced out of his simple life and the tremendous sorrow at having had such a small taste of freedom. Without thinking, Sandor veered towards an empty parking space outside the station.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” he fumed and threw the truck into park. He kicked open his door and was poised to barrel out, but Sansa gripped his arm hard. 

“No!” she shouted. “What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna have words with this motherfucker following us!” Sandor tossed one hand towards the black car, a sinister symbol of the threat they faced and all that was at stake, all their happiness and freedom on the brink of coming undone.

“No, stop! You will do no such thing,” Sansa insisted and tugged on Sandor to pull him back into the truck. “Look at me.” 

Sandor turned to her, and the panic in her eyes halted his movements. He slumped in his seat.

“How do you think that’s going to end?” Sansa implored and lifted her brows. The look in her eyes was a warning, and an apt one at that.

Not well was the obvious answer. It would end in incrimination. Why would he and Sansa, seeming strangers, have noticed the black car if they too hadn’t been in certain places at just the right time? And what would inspire such a heated response from Sandor, enough that he’d tear into the police station to raise unprovoked hell? He knew how this was bound to unravel if he didn’t walk the line with careful precision. One misstep and it would all come apart.

Sandor lifted his eyes to the brick building with its frosted glass doors emblazoned with a gold star and announcing Cactus’s proud name. It occurred to him now he hadn’t been here since the night Griff led him in handcuffs through these same doors, booked him, and ultimately brought down charges.

That night, Sandor had had the distinct feeling that his life was about to change; that crossing the threshold into the Cactus Police Station was emblematic of something—loss of freedom; loss of prospects; loss of job, home, respect, a future.

The engine idled quietly as Sansa rubbed her palm up his bicep and across his shoulders. Sandor felt his brows knit together in a pained expression that matched the heart of what vexed him now. He looked at her and voiced the agonizing truth.

“I can’t go back there,” Sandor whispered. “Sansa, I don’t wanna go back to where I was.”

“I know, sweetheart. You won’t,” she consoled with conviction enough that he almost believed she knew something about his future that he didn’t; that she divined things others just couldn’t know. “We have to go, though. We can’t fall apart now.” 

An uneasy smile spread across her lips, but her eyes drifted out his open door and to the long stretch of Main Street behind him.

“Sandor, we’ll figure this out,” she soothed with such sweet softness to her voice and her hand that slipped into his. “But you can’t go running into the police station and raising hell. That’s not gonna make it better.”

The smile on her lips now reached her eyes, a light in the darkness and something stilled in him.

“You sure?” Sandor huffed a laugh and glanced at the police station once more.

Sansa followed his eyes, undid her seatbelt, and scooted to his side on the bench seat. She reached across him and closed the truck door. She stared at him and pointed to the black car.

“If that person found a body, don’t you think we would have heard about it by now?”

Sandor nodded slow and his eyes did an even slower sweep up and down Sansa’s body—her beautiful face; the length of her legs; the swell of her breasts pressed against his bicep.

“You are never going back to where you were,” she insisted. All her ferocity roiled beneath the placid way she regarded him. He knew better than to ever underestimate her. “Trust me. If they try, _I’ll_ be the one in the police station raising hell.”

It wasn’t just a nice thought or reassurance to placate him. Something in the way Sansa spoke and the uncanny resolve taking over her felt like an omen and once more he wondered if she knew things, sensed things others just couldn’t.

He believed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, pep talk. I know last chapter was difficult and this one is too, so here’s what I’ll say: 
> 
> Remember after Chapter 6 when everything seemed bleak and hopeless and I said “it’s always darkest before dawn” and then two chapters later Sandor was waltzing his fine ass out of prison in his tight jeans and a white t-shirt and he got his Stetson back and his BFF Griff was there and Sandor also got his Pretty Woman “Big mistake. HUGE!” moment as he strutted past Boros as a free man? Just keep that in mind... 
> 
> All is not lost. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. The tone is going to start to shift, so this is the last of the dark chapters. Just hold on and remember I tagged this “well-earned happiness” for a reason. I don’t believe in unhappy endings for these two, no matter how dark it might get before the end. The light cometh. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Drop a comment and let me know what you think! I love reading your thoughts!


	20. Free Bird

They headed for a truck stop outside of Midland. That’s what Sandor said a few miles back, and Sansa suspected that’s all he really knew in that moment. They’d stretch their legs, grab dinner, and keep going. Where were they going? She hadn’t asked again; not since earlier. Mexico, maybe. Somewhere south. Somewhere far from home. _Home._

Small town to small town, the views of west Texas repeated ad infinitum with long stretches of forgotten highway in between. They passed an abandoned roadside amusement park that jogged a long-discarded memory in Sansa. She’d been there before as a child. In her childhood recollections, the place seemed bigger, more dazzling, the journey to get there far longer. In reality, it had been nothing more than a rickety carousel and a popcorn stand. All the ticket sales went straight into the coffers of a nearby church.

Her daddy’s truck had pulled up with Sansa, Jon, and Robb squashed in the back seat, Arya wedged between her parents up front, and Bran on her momma’s lap. It must’ve looked like a clown car when they all spilled out with boundless energy from being cooped up. Sansa had raced towards the carousel as if it were their final destination. The reality—they were southbound for a funeral, her uncle’s.

All she remembered was the kind old man who ran the carousel and its pink pony she’d wanted so desperately to ride. And she did. It felt like she was soaring; catapulted to the stars that surfaced in a twilight sky. Arms outstretched, she drank in that milky dusk and swore she’d never be happier. The world was sweet then.

“What’re you thinking about, darlin’?” Sandor asked and reached towards her. His hand gripped her thigh. Sansa gazed down at it—tanned skin with a few nicks and scratches; prominent bones; thick veins; strong fingers. She loved his hands.

“Just old memories,” Sansa replied with a soft smile and traced one fingertip along the peaks and valleys of his knuckles.

He didn’t believe her. The weight of his gaze told her that. She knew enough of him now to understand the feel of his attention against her skin and could divine a great deal from that alone. Perhaps they communicated in ways others couldn’t understand.

Sansa surveyed Sandor in the afternoon light. He was handsome; so very handsome. To think he’d once told her in a letter that he wasn’t much to look at. Was he being modest? Probably not.

_His letters._

It hadn’t occurred to her to bring them. It should have. She hadn’t even thought about it when she packed up her bags in Devil Creek and wondered now if that was a sin against the love they shared or a mere oversight.

“I sent you a letter,” Sansa told him on a gentle breath. Her confession beckoned a smile from him; a warm smile that housed fondness Sandor reserved only for her, she’d noticed. It made her proud.

“You sent me lots of letters,” he said. His eyes steadied out the windshield with soft focus, as if remembering a dream he’d once had. “I loved every one of them.”

“I mean after you were released from prison,” Sansa clarified. The wind whipped through the truck’s half-open windows and lifted her hair. “I sent you a letter while you were in solitary, and it must’ve come after you were paroled.”

The smile on Sandor’s lips widened; not quite devilish but close to it. They so seldom discussed that time. The joyful memories were woven amongst the bitter ones and futility had done its damnedest to douse their burgeoning connection with one another.

“What did it say?” Sandor asked and glanced at Sansa. He gripped the steering wheel and settled back in his seat.

_“When there’s nothing left to lose, there should be nothing left to say.”_

Her momma told her that once. Sansa didn’t understand what it meant and often thought her parents talked in riddles. Country wisdom was sometimes convoluted. _“Put it all on the line,”_ was the heart of it. And Sansa had done just that in her last letter to Sandor.

She hadn’t heard from him—not another call, no letters, just resounding silence. Pride might’ve bid her to let it go. It might’ve told her that the man was no longer interested, that she’d said or done something to send him away and she’d have to accept never knowing what it was. She wasn’t perfect and she had to swallow down plenty of pride to write that letter. If it was the last one, she had been intent to make it count and so she bled herself dry.

“I said that I still wanted to visit you and I hoped you might want to see me too,” Sansa relayed, an abysmal approximation of the heartfelt words she’d scribed that day. “That I felt drawn to you, that I cared for you and thought of you often, that my feelings for you had grown so much.”

Sandor’s smile faded, and he regarded her with a knowing look that’d sobered at the edges. “Was that code for falling in love?”

“Probably,” Sansa shrugged and stared at her hands in her lap. It only occurred to her now how embarrassing that letter might’ve been if he’d read it and not felt the same way. Then again, she wouldn’t have known. She picked at her fingernails, such a bad habit. “Or at least, on that path.”

In her periphery, Sandor stirred. He reached over and his arm snaked across her shoulders and urged her to his side. Sansa slid across the bench seat and settled against him. He kissed her forehead but kept his eyes on the road.

“I was too,” Sandor confessed as the truck engine hummed and the highway sounds filtered in.

Sansa gazed up at him. Her cheeks burned hot; almost as hot as when he first told her he loved her. This man was burning her up. “You were?” she asked dreamily.

He gave a slow nod, distracted in a way, as he chased down other memories. He’d surely never agree, but Sansa found him thoughtful with his words. Even the ones rough around the edges were poignant in their own way and haphazardly insightful.

“No one had ever regarded me in the way you had,” he began, and his arm tightened around her. “No one had ever opened up to me like that, listened, or cared. There was—and is—just something about you. I felt like we belonged together, that I’d met my match.”

Sansa sat up and pressed her lips to his cheek. His skin was warm. “We do belong together,” she whispered in his ear before settling against him again. 

“Men facing the same fate that I was are often just discarded,” Sandor remarked. “You never made me feel that way. Not once.”

She closed her eyes and studied the rise and fall of his chest, his warmth, the way he smelled, sounded, and felt against her. “You’re a treasure. My treasure.”

He sighed, a possible prelude to protest, but quiet laughter suffused his exhaled breath instead.

“Well, you know what they say?” he glanced down at her with a smirk.

“What do they say?” Sansa beamed up at him. Another wave of effervescent love and adoration swept through her. It’d cast her out to sea in no time, drifting and dreaming and riding the wave of this sentiment. She didn’t care if she ever saw land again.

“One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure,” Sandor quipped, but a hearty chuckle snipped his words.

And there she went; swept away by the sound of his voice, his rumbling laugh, the stubble on his jawline, the way his eyes glimmered. They conspired and carried her off. Sansa laughed with him and proclaimed once more how much she loved him. He loved her too.

The truck stop they pulled into had worn the years—all chipped paint and rusted metal; a dusty little diner; a half burned-out neon sign. It’d suffice for their needs—a tank of gas and food since neither had eaten yet today.

Sandor kissed her cheek and handed over a ten-dollar bill, more than enough for some sandwiches and cokes. He’d handle the gas and wipe free the graveyard of squashed bugs that’d collected on the windshield.

Sansa hopped from the truck and tucked the bill in the back pocket of her jeans. Across the lot, she worked out the soreness in her legs and stretched her arms over her head. When she slipped into the diner, a bell announced her presence and a row of truckers sitting at the counter all turned to look.

Sansa dropped her eyes to the sticky linoleum floor and veritably collapsed in on herself to go unnoticed. She let her hair fall in a curtain about her face, only lifting her gaze long enough to peruse the felted letter board hanging above the cash register. The yellowed letters were crooked and announced a barebones menu for take-out.

As she waited in line, Sansa scanned the cluttered counter near the register with its old rolls of mints and a bucket of lollipops. Her eyes drifted to the newspaper stand and her blood ran cold. She stifled a gasp that would’ve surely escaped her had she not pressed her lips together.

_Heartland Horror Spares None, Oil Heir Missing._

Joffrey beamed beneath the bold headline; a taunting smile of perfectly white and perfectly straight teeth, not a golden hair out of place, but his eyes were cruel. There was no hiding that. _All that glitters is not gold._

And here he was—the charade of tragedy, a picture deliberately selected to show him at his best. It was contrived and possessed the heavy-handed overtones of his mother. She’d play up her grief and rake in the sympathy, but she too was a monster.

The last Thanksgiving Sansa spent with him, Joffrey’s mother had compared their family to the Kennedys. She’d meant clout; a powerful, connected, distinguished dynasty; charmed Americana, the envy of the masses. To avoid guffawing at the absurdity, Sansa had pointed out the tragedy that afflicted the Kennedys. A dark shadow loomed over that family and they sheltered equally dark secrets within their bloodline.

His mother must’ve seen some threat in that, perhaps prophecy even. It was the last holiday Sansa spent with them, the last she was invited to. _Good riddance,_ she’d thought until the disproportionate consequences of the transgression appeared. One by one, demos of a song she’d written, the one she’d poured her soul into, were sent back to her from record labels. The venues in Kansas City where she routinely sang had abruptly dropped her from their line-up. What little traction she’d gained on her dreams was snuffed out with an icy immediacy. Those dreams were dead, her heart was crushed, and the retribution was as sweeping as it was swift.

She couldn’t imagine what the consequences would be for Joffrey’s death and the ends his mother would go to to tear Sansa’s world apart. She’d inadvertently promised tragedy for the Lannisters and now here it was, splashed across headlines.

The wealthy put up a great fuss over their own tragedies, as if everyday people didn’t suffer the same fate. How many dead and missing girls made headline news? How many of their faces appeared in newspapers so far from their home? None. The answer was almost certainly none. Their pictures might’ve appeared once in the obituary, but their memories would be stuffed away and turned into small-town lore; the time a girl turned up dead. It’d become a cautionary tale to cull the independent instincts of young women. No one would remember the dead girl’s name, only the horror that’d befallen her.

And yet pomp and circumstance would surround Joffrey’s disappearance. He’d be made a martyr—that sad story of a bright future snuffed out; the black mark of family tragedy; how misfortune sometimes afflicts the fortunate. _“It’s so sad and senseless,”_ people would whisper, and they’d talk about how brilliant he was, an innovator, a maverick, a madman out to change the world. She knew the truth of him—a Svengali, a master of malice and manipulation, a monster in plain sight.

“What can I get you?” an exhausted waitress barked.

Startled, Sansa’s eyes snapped up as if ripped from a dream. The line in front of her had cleared. She approached the counter and ordered their meals. Sandor wasn’t a picky eater, and Sansa’s appetite had swiftly fled, so it didn’t quite matter what she selected from the scant menu.

She watched as the waitress rang up the total. Sweat stained the woman’s polyester top beneath her armpits. The heat of the grills rendered her hair frizz and fly-aways. Lipstick stained her teeth. Sansa tried not to stare. Her mind drifted.

“Name for the order.” The pecking at the register abruptly stopped.

Sansa hesitated. Her eyes flicked to the newspaper. _Shit._ No normal person took this long to give their name, only run-aways and deceivers. She licked her bottom lip and swallowed hard. The woman probably noticed that too.

“Ma’am?” the waitress demanded with false courtesy and waning patience.

“Oh, sorry. Alayne,” Sansa mumbled and did her best impression of someone just roused from highway hypnosis. She glanced at the newspaper again.

“You buying it?” The waitress followed her eyes and firmly tipped her head to Joffrey’s face, as if Sansa had squandered her free perusal and that meant she had to pay up now.

“No.” Sansa dug into her back pocket and handed over the ten-dollar bill.

“We’ll call your name when it’s ready,” the waitress said and jabbed Sansa’s change into her hand.

She clumsily shoved it in her pocket as she walked along the counter and planted herself at the very end, away from the truckers. She gazed out the diner’s window to the gas pumps. Sandor scrubbed the truck’s windshield with a squeegee. A smile crept across her lips as she watched him—his long limbs, thick arms, his ass in those jeans.

“You know that family has money to burn,” a voice surfaced amongst the diner’s white noise of clanging utensils and spatulas tapping the grills. “They’ll find him, dead or alive.”

Sansa stilled to listen but kept her eyes out the window. In her periphery, a trucker prodded his finger against the newspaper that sat next to a half-eaten plate of greasy slop.

“Shit, if nothing else, they’ll keep his face on the front-page of every newspaper from Kansas City down to El Paso and everywhere in between.”

Sansa swiveled slightly in her seat and rested her hands in her lap where she nervously drummed her fingers against the tops of her thighs. The trucker closest to her—a short, weasel-looking man with beady eyes—joined the conversation.

“Folk are sayin’ it’s that maniac, that killer on the loose!” he hollered as if his voice might not carry. It carried just fine; fine enough that even the cooks at the grills turned to look. 

Sansa dropped her eyes. What she wouldn’t give to melt into the wall and disappear. The diner stifled with heat. She eyed the activity behind the counter, desperately hoping that her order would be up any minute now.

“He going after men now?” the waitress cut in as she packaged up food in white paper bags.

Sansa’s heart beat loud in her chest. She scrutinized the row of truckers. Her face. They’d all seen her face now. They couldn’t possibly know who she was but, as each took their turn eying her, Sansa felt like they were peering through the thin facade she’d put up with a false name.

“Ain’t none of us safe anymore,” a trucker grumbled and lifted his coffee mug to his lips. He gave a shameful shake of his head. The comment infuriated her.

_How does it feel?_ Sansa wanted to snap. A man goes missing and suddenly men everywhere pay attention, realizing the world isn’t so safe and they can no longer blithely go about their business with little mind to their own safety.

“Killer amongst us all, I guess,” the weasel man said and stared squarely at Sansa.

She sat up and felt the blood drain from her face. One by one, all the truckers followed his gaze and gawked at her. Sansa’s eyes darted down the line of truckers and back up again. She fought the instinct to shake her head, to set the record straight, to respond in some way. _It’s not me! No. We didn’t do it._

She wanted to scream. She wanted to tell them what kind of monster Joffrey was. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair! They didn’t know what he’d done. They didn’t know. 

“That you, ain’t it?” a trucker pressed.

“Huh?” Sansa hummed, only vaguely aware of the waitress calling a name.

“Alayne!” the woman hollered in front of Sansa. She held up a white paper bag and gave it a little shake. “Order’s up!”

Sansa slipped from the stool, snatched up the bag, and hurried from the diner with nothing more than a mumbled “thank you,” not caring much that Alayne was apparently rude. 

She expelled a distressed breath as she hurried across the parking lot to Sandor’s empty truck. She climbed into the passenger seat and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, she scanned the truck stop, fearful now that she was being watched. Inside the gas mart, she saw Sandor at the counter handing off money. Sansa dug into her back pocket for his change and watched when he strode across the lot with his Stetson pulled down low on his brow.

He settled in the driver’s seat and tipped his hat up enough to look at her. Sansa tried to hide her unease and held out his change to him.

“Keep it,” he rasped. “Everything that’s mine is yours now too.” The smile he gave was enthralled, as if remembering they had a future together. It warmed him from within, and Sansa hoped it might drive out the worry in her that chilled her to the bone.

After he fired up the truck, Sandor pulled away from the gas pump and navigated to the far end of the parking lot, well-beyond the diner and its activity. He parked in a vacant expanse of cracked asphalt baking in the sun and killed the engine. Their view was the highway with cars and semis zipping past. Cicadas sang in a grove of trees just behind the truck stop.

Sandor dug into the food bag and handed Sansa a sandwich. The way he looked at her and the hesitation in his movements said her reticence hadn’t escaped his notice. With his key, Sandor popped the top off her coke bottle and handed it to her. He unwrapped his sandwich, but ultimately let it sit untouched on the wrapper in his lap.

“You okay?” he ventured.

“I don’t think so,” Sansa whispered and shook her head.

Her eyes stung with the promise of tears. She abandoned the instinct to wallpaper over it and veer the conversation towards something inane. He’d admitted his fear to her, and she owed him that same honesty, so Sansa matched his imploring gaze.

“I’m scared. They’ve got his face all over the newspaper. A missing oil heir, it says; as if that’s such a tragedy.”

Sandor drew a deep breath and absorbed her words as he stared out the windshield. He took a bite of his sandwich, perhaps to buy himself time for an answer.

“It’s not fair,” Sansa continued. “He did horrible things and people are sympathizing; thinking about how awful his mother must feel and all the people missing him. I know life isn’t always meant to be fair but sometimes the injustices are just…so…”

She couldn’t summon the right words, so she shut her mouth and picked at her sandwich’s wrapper. The hopelessness would undo her.

“I know,” Sandor consoled.

It wasn’t meant to placate. Sansa studied his face as he continued to survey the highway. He knew better than anyone about injustice. He had seen it firsthand. He’d told her once about how certain folk suffered more than others in a broken system. The color of his skin meant that he was spared certain atrocities in prison, yet he gained no comfort from that as he’d watched others suffer horror at the hands of the guards. He knew just how ugly the world was and considered himself a lucky one.

Sansa turned to him with her legs folded together and curled up on the bench seat. “How are people meant to live with that?”

By the deep breath Sandor drew, she knew it was a loaded question and one he’d probably asked himself repeatedly. She felt kindred to him in a different way now, Sansa realized. The ground they’d stood on together had always been even—they’d both seen to that—but they now shared experiences, cultivated the same soil, and were equally invested in what grew there. The roots spread deeper, truer, stronger.

Sandor sipped his coke and paused a moment as he stared down at his sandwich. It looked sad—just turkey that’d roasted too long and melted cheese that was an unnatural shade of orange. What she wouldn’t give to be back home and making him the sandwich he deserved—a great big sandwich, unburdened of crust, just how he liked it; the kind he could sink his teeth into. She frowned. Everything was unfair. 

“They believe in God, I guess,” Sandor answered with a shrug. “That there’s some great power evening out the scales. Someone wrongs you, and a mighty hand reaches down from a cloud and smites them on your behalf. I always thought that seemed sort of selfish; that universal justice is constructed to serve the individual when so many people suffer from injustices as a whole.”

“Who does justice serve then?” Sansa sensed this question didn’t have an easy answer either, but she asked it anyway, if nothing more because she liked hearing Sandor’s thoughts on things and listening to how his mind worked. He was a brilliant man.

“No one that I know of,” he snorted. “But I do find that people get what they have coming, and it’s delivered by those who’ve had enough of their shit. Not some God. You piss enough people off in this world and you’re gonna hear about it. There’s some peace to be found in that.” Sandor quieted and reached over. His palm smoothed along the outside of her thigh. “The thing is—he won’t hurt anyone anymore. That might be the only justice that comes from this, Sansa.”

She couldn’t argue with the logic and there was no sense in decrying the injustice of it all, so Sansa nodded and stared at the sandwich in her hand, still wrapped up and getting colder by the minute.

“You’re not eating,” he commented and squeezed her thigh before returning to his own food. 

“I don’t feel well,” she mumbled.

She meant a general state of feeling ill at ease. Nothing in particular ached and she felt no sickness coming on, but the rustling of Sandor’s sandwich wrapper abruptly stopped. He turned to her with worry clouding his features, solemn eyes and brows drawn together.

“It’s lady time?” he asked, sincere and somber. “You want me to go to the pharmacy and get you some medicine and supplies?”

A bright smile broke across Sansa’s lips and she tried to stifle a laugh as she lifted a hand to his cheek. “No, it’s not that,” she chuckled. “That’s very sweet of you to offer, though.”

Sandor returned her smile as relief seemed to wash over him. The mood lifted. He reached for her and pulled Sansa over to him. He loved having her near. She loved it too.

“I told you I’d take care of you.” He kissed the top of her head and his fingertips traipsed up and down her arm. “That means getting your woman supplies,” he declared with such proud conviction that Sansa erupted in giggles again.

“What do you mean by ‘woman supplies’?” Sansa asked as tears of laughter pearled in her eyes.

Sandor thought it over for a moment with a serious expression before cracking a smile and gazing down at her.

“Well, shit, I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Whatever is in that lady aisle with the napkins and tampons and such. I’d get you Tylenol, chocolate, nail polish, magazines, lipsticks. You know, things to make you feel better.”

“You’d get all that for me?” Sansa beamed up at him and, if she had little interest in her sandwich before, it was all but forgotten now. Her palm ran up the inside of his thigh.

“Of course, I would! I never understood why men put up a fuss doing that. If I’m buying tampons and lipsticks, you best believe it’s because I’ve got a woman at home who I love and I’m man enough to take care of her right.”

Sansa fought the instinct to crawl into his lap. The sandwich was there anyhow. She wrapped her arm tight around his middle and held onto him.

“You’re such a good man and you make me happy,” she whispered against his chest and closed her eyes. Sansa sat up and, with her elbow propped against the back of the seat, rested her head in her palm.

“It’s funny. You were worked up before and I was the calm one,” Sansa remarked. “Now _I’m_ worked up and _you’re_ the calm one.”

“Well, I guess that means we make a good team,” Sandor said with a broad smile and paused a moment. He’d seemed to shed vexation on the journey here and now regarded her with placidity. “The thing is, Sansa, when we’re together, nothing feels so impossible. Everything else may be uncertain, but I believe in you and me, and that’s the only certainty I think I need right now. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Faith. He was talking about faith. He never used that word, perhaps finding it too inextricably linked to religion, so he’d talk around it, but she knew what he meant. She always knew what he meant.

“I understand. I feel it too.” Sansa studied his face—his handsome, strong, sincere features; the man she loved, her everything. “There was something else I said in that last letter. Remember, you’d hung up the phone on me right after I asked if I could come see you?”

Sandor broke with laughter and Sansa shared his mirth, the situation humorous in hindsight. It seemed another lifetime. Their love had already known so many chapters, and they were still early in their story. It felt as though they’d lived it before, that it’d been written in another time.

“I didn’t know then if it was on purpose, if you ran out of time, or what happened. I said in that letter that I’d lost faith in so many things over the past year and hadn’t minded much a faithless existence. I’d come to believe that faith in the right people was more important than faith in God. I wrote that I had faith in you; that I believed in you. I still do. I have faith in _you_. That’s the only certainty I need too.”

* * *

They drove through Texas stepwise south, cutting to the west and sometimes east along back-country roads before turning south again. The mile markers stood for something. Each one they passed meant gaining distance from the turmoil they’d left behind. It melted away in the rearview mirror that Sandor periodically checked for unwelcome companions.

For the most part, the journey had been clear, all except his rumination on their future and the road not yet traveled. With each mile, Sandor gained new appreciation of the place he’d called home for the better part of his life. Freedom took on new meaning too, defined in a palette of fresh colors.

The radio hummed between them and he and Sansa listened until the songs dissolved into static and they abandoned the music altogether. Every so often, one or the other would reach over and the looks exchanged spoke on their behalf. After they left the truck stop, not a whole lot was said between them. It didn’t need to be. Absorbed in the tranquil quiet, they each sifted through the tangle.

The sun set like watercolors splashed across a China blue sky; the beauty of an unbroken dusk painted in peach and gold, and casting sepia light to soften the landscape. What it lacked in lush green and velvet haze, it made up for in openness that felt like a sighing breath. The earth knew its place here and expanded flat and featureless, yielding to that great big sky. Even the breeze that whipped through the car smelled like summer twilight, sweet grass and fresh earth.

Their plan was simple. They’d travel as far south as they could until sunset and then find a place to stay for the night. Sandor would check in with Bronn and they’d hope for the best, whatever that ended up being.

The sun hadn’t quite dipped below the western horizon when Sandor pulled off the two-lane highway and into a small town that boasted only a motel and gas station. Its existence catered to folks passing through, and the extraneous industries had been trimmed away. The motel looked like a relic lost to time, a few decades anachronous in its kitschy colors and starburst themes; a 1950s idealist vision of the future. It’d do for the night.

From the glove compartment, Sandor plucked bills from the stack of cash, enough money to live on for weeks if they had to. He kissed Sansa and bought them a room for the night from a clerk who stared at him with dull eyes and deep purple bags beneath.

He parked the truck at the far end of the pot-holed lot where weeds sprouted from the cracks. Along the way, he spotted a payphone just beyond the end of the building. He and Sansa carried their bags into their humble accommodation—one stiff looking double bed, two particleboard night stands, and a worn-out armchair whose upholstery was stained with only God knew what.

Sansa dropped her bag on the dresser next to a small TV. Its bent antennas had taken the brunt over the years by the looks of them. Sandor tossed his bag to the bed. He approached Sansa who stood in the center of the room. Her eyes studied the faded wallpaper that peeled at the corners, the thread-bare bed linens, and matted carpet beneath her feet.

Sandor gathered her up by her waist and sat at the edge of the bed. She stood between his legs and her arms draped against his shoulders sore from the drive. She stared at him. The look pouring from behind her eyes was affection steeped in sorrow. He drew her near and craned his neck until his lips brushed against hers. She sunk against him and her fingers twirled the ends of his hair.

“It’s not the Ritz, but it’ll do,” Sandor commented with a glance around the room. It damn near suffocated with musty air and a floral air freshener tried hard to mask the scent of stale smoke. 

“It’ll do,” Sansa concurred with a laugh and continued brushing her fingers through his hair.

Sandor’s heart fluttered in an unusual way that eased the tension in his shoulders. He closed his eyes against the soothing sensation and was in danger of falling asleep if she kept at it, so he stood and planted a kiss on her forehead before heading for the door.

“You stay here,” Sandor said and tucked the room key in his back pocket. “I’m gonna call Bronn. Don’t open the door for anyone until I get back.”

Sansa nodded, but her features had gone sullen once more. With the door shut and locked behind him, Sandor walked along the building, past two more faded blue doors, and around the corner to the pay phone. The motel’s neon lights blazed in loud color against the muted dusk. Perhaps fear would flee to the sinister shadows where it belonged and let the light reign a little longer. Then again, time didn’t work that way. And neither did the light.

The gravel and rock crunched beneath his feet as Sandor settled in front of the phone. Heat radiated from the sunbaked dirt and he dug a dime from his back pocket. He slotted the coin and dialed Bronn’s number. Sandor leaned against the dingy payphone case with one arm resting on top as he pressed the receiver to his ear.

After two rings, Bronn picked up and his strained greeting suggested he knew damn well who was on the other end.

“It’s me,” Sandor spoke on a hush that the breeze almost swept away. “Is it safe to talk?”

“Yes, but I gotta be quick,” Bronn said, and the rest of his words came fast, almost staccato with quick hits. “Father Bill will meet you in Del Rio the day after tomorrow. There’s an abandoned church where Riverview Lane intersects San Felipe creek. Meet him there at noon. If you’re not there by ten after, he’ll assume you got jammed up, so don’t be late. He’ll get you over the border and to one of his safe houses in Zaragoza.”

The finality came not in one hard blow, but a salvo that bombarded with painful truth. Sandor stared across the flat expanse in front of him and the sun’s dying light that set the horizon on fire. What little peace and freedom he’d found was suddenly fleeting and fading just as surely as the sunlight.

“You there?” Bronn asked when Sandor hadn’t responded.

“Yeah,” he whispered and nodded, though Bronn wasn’t here to see. “What do I owe him?”

“Nothing,” Bronn replied with nonplussed simplicity, though Sandor wasn’t that naïve and certainly not that stupid.

He’d never met Father Bill. The man existed in myth alone and seemed to relish the folklore that followed him. Sandor knew the type all too well in his years bunking with Beric. A monolithic worldview entangled with ego, if you challenge one, you threaten the other and folk like Beric and probably Father Bill had a violent way of lashing out.

“I don’t trust that,” Sandor countered on a low rumble. “Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I know he ain’t doing this out of some kindness in his heart.”

Bronn cleared his throat and the buffer of quiet said he was thinking it over too, but when he started again, he only doubled down.

“Like I said, he owes me a favor. That’ll take care of most of it. He says you can pay him back once you’re in Mexico and settled. I don’t reckon you have many other options right now.”

Under any other circumstance, Sandor would’ve dug in his heels with stubborn suspicion, but Bronn had the right of it. He swallowed his pride and, along with it, better judgement.

“I can’t thank you enough, brother,” Sandor said sincerely. 

“Don’t mention it.” Bronn’s distress rippled through the line and he hesitated before speaking again. “It’s a good thing you left when you did. The police came to your house again; this time with Griff in tow.”

“Fuck.” Sandor closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did they come with a warrant?”

“I don’t know. I only heard through the grapevine.” More trepidation came. It never amounted to anything good. “Listen, I hope you don’t mind, but I told Griff about what’s going on.”

“What did you tell him?” Sandor pressed.

Griff wasn’t one to run his mouth all over town, but Sandor had always respected the side of the law Griff landed on and understood the man had obligations and expectations because of it.

“I told him you’re heading south and that you’ll be in Del Rio; that you’re safe and you’ve got Sansa with you. He’s gonna run interference and keep the Rangers in check.”

Sandor huffed a quiet laugh. “An ambitious undertaking. If anyone can handle that, it’s Griff.” 

Bronn went quiet again and so too did Sandor with mutual understanding hitting them simultaneously, it seemed.

“Stay safe,” Bronn said and, by the rustle coming through the line, was poised to end the call until Sandor interjected. 

“Hey, one more thing, Father Bill—is that just a name or does the title carry some certification?”

Bronn expelled a knowing laugh, the one he reserved for Father Bill alone and sodden with full knowledge and acquiescent acceptance of the strange friend he’d made.

“I wouldn’t call a sinner like him a man of God per se, but he’s ordained.” Bronn paused long enough to skim between the lines. “I catch your drift. I’ll give him a heads up.”

“Thank you,” Sandor said, and the eminent departure loomed heavy in his heart. He adjusted his hat and stared at the tips of his boots, one of which he trailed through the dust. “Listen, I love you. I won’t say anything else about it, but I suppose it needed to be said after all these years.”

“I love you too,” Bronn responded with no hesitation and just as much sentiment crowding the line. “See you sometime…or never again…either way, it was always a pleasure.”

“The pleasure was mine, my friend.” Sandor closed his eyes and hung up the line before he changed his mind once more.

He departed the pay phone and headed back to the room. The dusty daydream was over. The promise of new freedom he’d picked up on the road south fled him again. Sandor claimed he had nothing to forsake, but life had a funny way of revealing those things just as he was ready to let them fly.

He had friends; damn good ones who put their own livelihoods on the line for him. He had a home that was simple, but it was his and he’d filled it up these past few weeks with visions of what his life might be with a woman he loved. He had a truck that gave him hell half the time, but it’d carried him home after some of his darkest hours.

As he unlocked the door, Sandor turned to a twilight sky of rich blue and remarked on the hilarious irony of his whole damn life. The sardonic mirth was short-lived. When he pushed through the door, Sansa sat at the end of the bed with her eyes peeled to the TV. The picture came in and out of focus. Seemingly lost in a nightmare, she was white as a sheet and didn’t stir as he shut and locked the door.

“What happened?” Sandor demanded with his pulse on the rise as he dashed to her side. “What’s going on?”

She gaped up at him with wide eyes full of fright and pointed to the TV as if that might illuminate it. The evening news anchor’s voice drifted in on static and dubbed over an image of what appeared to be a press conference with Kansas City authorities. Two figures stood to the left of the podium where an investigator addressed the media.

The blonde woman might’ve been stunning if it weren’t for the sinister, slow-burning, and calculated rage that seemed to fester in her. She stood still and stared straight at the camera. Her feathered hair framed a cruel face. A man stood next to her—just as golden and, while not as rigid, looking equally displeased.

“That’s them,” Sansa finally muttered and pulled her legs onto the bed. She cradled her knees against her chest and rested her chin on top. “That’s his family. His mother. His uncle.”

The program cut back to the anchor and Sandor leaned forward to turn up the volume. He settled back on the bed next to Sansa as they listened. 

“In Missouri, the investigation into the disappearance of Joffrey Lannister-Baratheon, heir to the Lannister Petroleum empire, is now an open homicide investigation.”

As the anchor spoke, a picture of Joffrey flashed on the screen. Sansa expelled a broken breath, and Sandor wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He understood now what she meant when she fearfully asserted that he’d changed so much. Clean shaven and with a hard part in his blond hair, he looked every bit his upbringing and not the deranged maniac who’d turned up to terrorize Sansa.

“Federal law enforcement is urging anyone with information to come forward. Kansas City authorities have not released details of the investigation but have identified at least two persons of interest and plan to release those names within the next few days.”

He’d heard enough.

Sandor hopped from the bed and switched off the TV. In the absence of white static, the motel room possessed an eerie quality in the stillness; quiet, vacuous, devoid of light, all but the bedside lamp emanating a sickening glow.

Sansa released her legs and, with her elbows resting on her knees, buried her face in her palms. Sandor slid from the bed and crouched in front of her. Though she didn’t cry, miserable sadness etched a deep frown on her lips and her eyes held a dull fatigue he hadn’t quite seen in her before.

He knew the look, though. He saw it in drifters and folk on the run. That listless existence battered the best of them, and Sansa was nothing if not strong of spirit. This had only just begun for them, though, and wasn’t bound to get any easier.

“Jesus, a homicide investigation? That means they found something, right?” Sansa’s eyes darted across his face as she waited for his answer, any kind of reassurance.

“Not necessarily. You said that family is connected. Sansa, not all cops are like Griff. Money talks, even to the authorities. Sometimes especially to the authorities.”

The more he turned this over in his mind, the less sense it made. Sandor scratched at the stubble on his chin, thankful that Sansa remembered to bring his shaving kit.

“If he was last seen in Texas, why are the Kansas City police opening a homicide investigation?”

Sansa slowly nodded and released a heavy breath. “What do you think it means?”

Sandor stood from his crouched position and sat next to her on the bed.

“Things aren’t adding up. It means even if the police in Kansas City have reason to believe he was murdered, it’s outside their jurisdiction. It’s been two weeks since we left Devil Creek; two weeks since we saw that cop around the hole we dug. You’d think they would’ve announced finding his body by now.”

Sandor paused a beat as he pieced it altogether; the picture not quite whole but parts of it coming into focus. “I’m not worried about some press conference where those assholes trotted out their paid-for investigators and made a spectacle for the media.”

“What are you worried about then?” Sansa asked.

Sandor answered honestly, though some unexpected bout of superstition cautioned against voicing his fears and the unfortunate implications.

“The feds showed up at Bronn’s bar. If the feds are involved, that means they’ll strong-arm Griff out of the investigation. He’ll be expected to comply and cooperate.” Sandor hesitated and not for wanting to keep things from Sansa. The words stung on his tongue and he voiced them with the hope that it might banish the thought. “Bronn told him where we’re going.”

Sansa gasped and shook her head as she fixed her eyes on Sandor. “He wouldn’t. I know I’ve never met Griff, but the way you talk about him, Sandor, he wouldn’t.”

She was right. Griff wouldn’t out them. Of course, he wouldn’t. It’d be pure treachery of the worst kind. Despite that, Sandor was growing less convinced that the discrepancies in the investigations and the things that didn’t add up would work in their favor.

Sansa motioned to the TV. “I know you think that’s just a scene, but they won’t stop until they find me, find us,” she whispered pitifully.

Sandor gathered up her hands and stared at her imploringly. “Sansa, listen to me—”

“You don’t understand what his mother is like,” she interjected with an adamant shake of her head. “That woman is ruthless and brutal. They’ve protected him. Always. And anyone or anything who stands in their way, they’ll take down and silence in whatever way possible.”

_You don’t know what we’re up against,_ Sansa might’ve said and, though she hadn’t used those exact words, the sentiment still echoed loud enough for Sandor to hear. All day long, he’d battled the contrarian inner voice that scoffed at his overreaction; the same voice that said this was a fool’s errand that would end in disaster through his own manifestation, not someone else’s.

The voice had been laid to rest now and, with its death, he lost some wayward comfort. He’d rather laugh at himself for overreacting than land where he was now—knee deep in a shit storm that was only just beginning.

“We’ll leave here in the morning and head for the border,” Sandor tried to console and gripped Sansa’s hands tighter. “Arrangements have been made for us. The day after next, we’re leaving, Sansa. We’ll put this behind us.”

Sweet as ever, even in hardship, she flashed a doleful smile, but he discerned the dubious look in her eyes.

With his fingertips beneath her chin, Sandor tipped her head to look at him. He kissed her softly and muttered against her mouth, “Remember what you said?”

“I’ve said so many things.” Sansa huffed a quiet laugh, and Sandor pulled away just enough to meet her eyes again. His hands cradled her cheeks and fingers disappeared in her hair.

“We’re family, you and I. And, while I don’t know those people on the TV, I can take one look at them and see that they’ve never known the love we do. There’s strength in that. Don’t give up on me now. I need you to have a little faith. Just keep that faith in me.”

He dropped his eyes, and with that gravity, his voice softened too. Here he was—a man who’d rejected all manner of divinity, and yet he was entreating her to believe that this would work out when he couldn’t even promise her tomorrow.

This was what she’d meant in sharing the burden, it seemed. The path was never promised to be easy or free from adversity. When he grew weary, she’d take the lead until it was his turn again and on it’d go; back to back, fighting against the forces that sought to tear them apart. Sansa turned to him and rested her forehead against his.

“Sandor Clegane,” she whispered. “My heart, my soul. If there’s anything in this world I believe in anymore, it’s you. My faith is yours.”

A shadow in the room seemed to lift and he watched levity return to her, surfacing slowly from the depths of sorrow and fear under which it had been buried. They’d have to fight for the light, he knew now. Of course, they would. Like a veil lifted and the wool ripped from his eyes, Sandor saw it clearly now. This was as much a fight for faith and hope as it was a fight against the circumstances that might part them.

In his life, faith and hope were luxuries for the eternally blessed; the fortunate souls, born with advantage on their side, who proselytized the merit of belief in the unknowable and unseeable. Sandor knew and saw now the only thing that mattered, the one thing worth believing in, and the well-spring of faith and hope—the woman sitting before him. It felt like turning a corner and the understanding was plain as day. _Fight for the light._

With a hand at Sansa’s cheek, Sandor kissed her softly and stood from the bed.

“Okay, I know what we need,” he declared and hurried to the bedside table with a sudden and joyous burst of energy.

Sansa watched him with curious eyes as he flicked on the radio and fussed with the dial. He turned it slow until the static faded and a DJ’s resonant voice came through. Sandor stilled and lifted his gaze to the ceiling as he listened and waited for a song.

As luck would have it, an Al Green tune lilted from the speaker. _Let’s Stay Together._ Of all songs. It must’ve been divine intervention, perhaps. A sign. A prophecy. Whatever it was, Sandor grinned and paced in slow steps to Sansa whose cheeks were now flushed pink.

“See, look at that.” Sandor gestured to the radio, the auditory beacon of hope. “Things are already looking up. I love this song.”

A smile broke across Sansa’s lips and worry seemed to flee her. Palm up, Sandor extended his hand to her. “You’ve never danced with me,” he remarked with a grin; not an accusation, just a glaring omission. 

They’d gotten high, made love, cooked, drank, carried out their life together against the backdrop of records, but never this. He saw now the travesty in it.

Sansa beamed and slipped her hand into his. Sandor pulled her to her feet and into his arms. He never had to coax her there. She always came so willingly and with ceaseless desire to be near him. 

“I thought you didn’t dance,” she said, and her voice rippled with laughter. Her body pressed against his and she draped one arm over his shoulder. Her other hand rested against his chest and Sandor covered it with his own.

It was true. Blessed with two left feet and too tall to be all that graceful, Sandor didn’t dance; a blasphemy in Texas where any cowboy worth his salt knew how to two-step. Sandor cracked a smile and swayed with Sansa, aware he was slightly off rhythm. Neither cared. It wasn’t the point.

“I believe I said that I wasn’t much at two-step. But this...” His hands slipped to her ass. He drew her close and let her lead the rhythm, enjoying the slight buck of her hips against him. “This I can dance to.”

Yellow and offensive before, the light from the bedside table seemed less garish now and inherited some softness, a romantic haze. The room’s features were less sad and more quirky, something to laugh about—the air freshener’s attempt at verdant redolence; the bedspread’s whacky pattern; the TV antennas barely holding their shape.

“I’m going to twirl you now,” Sandor announced, his deadpan deliberate and meant to make her laugh. Laugh she did, veritably lit from within. Sandor lifted his arm and Sansa spun underneath.

“Do you announce all your moves?” she giggled and returned once more to his arms.

“Not all of them,” he replied with a wink and squeezed her backside, but she already knew what he meant and bit her lip with anticipation perhaps. She loved it. “I’ve already surprised you with one.”

Her palms smoothed up his chest and her fingers subtly popped one button on his shirt. “Well, you did promise it was coming. I just forgot.”

She gazed up at him from beneath her lashes and her arms found their way around his neck once more.

A rough laugh escaped Sandor. “I made sure you remembered. I’ll jog your memory on a few other things too.”

As they swayed together in a united cadence, Sansa glanced at the bed and back up to him, smiled, and repeated the cycle once more only now she bit her bottom lip and her eyes held that familiar sultry softness. He knew what it meant. With the whole night ahead of them, there’d be plenty of time for that. For now, he relished having her close and found that he’d grown to admire the simple intimacy they shared in so many things he’d once found mundane. 

Sandor followed her eyes to the hideous bed linens. They looked childish in a way with loud colors, faded in parts, and with an odd attempt at a paisley pattern that failed miserably to be interesting, let alone stylish.

He gripped Sansa’s hips and stared down at her with a serious expression willed on his face.

“Darlin’, I know you want this bedspread for our house,” Sandor quipped. “I see the way you’ve been eying it. I’ll see what I can do.”

He wrapped her up in his arms and held her tight against his chest as she erupted in a fit of giggles that came muffled. He loved her laugh.

Sansa pulled her face from his chest and rested her chin there as she smiled up at him with tears in her eyes. “The only thing I’ve been eying are the mystery stains.”

Sandor broke with a resounding chuckle too but clung to the ruse that only sent her further into side-stitching laughter.

“Don’t you worry,” he declared and cupped her cheeks. “I know you’re too polite to admit how badly you want our bedroom to look like this. You just wait and see. I’ll decorate it this exact way.”

Sansa gawked at the room and its horrid, mismatched decorations that couldn’t decide on a theme. Was it space-age? Maybe, but then half of it tried to jump on the harvest gold and avocado bandwagon with a daisy-patterned armchair. Then there was the headache-inducing psychedelic art.

“Oh yeah? You’re gonna decorate our bedroom?”

She stared up at him adoringly. Her nails softly traipsed up and down his back as she swayed with him. Sandor lifted one brow at her and felt a broad smile sweep across his mouth.

“Maybe I will,” he laughed and motioned to quite possibly the ugliest lamps he’d ever seen—a bright red Bakelite base and black shades covered in a layer of dust and one size too small. “I’ll take these lamps with us when we leave. You’re gonna love it.”

“You wouldn’t,” Sansa gasped and feigned appall, but bit her bottom lip again, a flirtatious little gesture.

“Maybe not the lamps,” he conceded. “I know I’d be sleeping on the couch if I tried to put those in our bedroom.”

Sansa’s face flattened. Her smile faded but the adoration still poured forth from the way she gazed at him. She reached up and cradled his face in her hands.

“You will never sleep on the couch. No matter how mad I may be at you, we’ll never sleep in different places.” She meant it, he knew. She was just that kind of woman. He dipped down and pressed his lips against hers and his tongue swept into her mouth in a deep kiss.

“Besides,” Sansa whispered when the kiss broke. “If you decorate our bedroom like this, I would make you sleep in the hideousness too.”

Sandor exhaled a laugh and kissed her forehead. “That’s only fair.”

Sansa’s arms snaked around his waist and she stared up at him. It seemed to Sandor that they were making memories in real time. Maybe one day they’d look back on this night and it wouldn’t be the fear or uncertainty that they remembered, but the simple happiness they’d found, the shared recollections of a cheap motel room and their first dance, the love that’d redefined both of their lives. Perhaps all he’d remember was the way she smiled at him, held onto him, shed her fear and walked with him down the path of merriment; how they’d cobbled together some hope and nurtured it between them.

“It’s gonna be alright,” Sandor whispered with certainty whose origins he didn’t understand. It was the same knowing that’d sent him out in the storm to Devil Creek; the same one that wouldn’t be ignored. He didn’t believe in God, but he’d come to believe that some force was looking out for them, guiding the way and protecting what they’d forged together. “I don’t know why I feel like it will be, but I just do.”

“I believe you,” Sansa said and matched his tranquil joy. Neither questioned why it’d come now and what it meant. And that was faith, he knew. This was what it meant to have faith.

As a child, his brother had burned away that faith as easily as Sandor’s flesh—those he relied on to protect him had failed. As a man, he’d lost faith during the war—the worst of humanity had been put on gruesome display. He’d lost faith during his five long years in prison—a mockery of justice that served none. But in a cheap motel room with matted carpets and peeling wallpaper, he found it again, enough to hold onto.

And maybe that was the point of all this. Only a fool would claim to understand the Universe’s intentions, its plans and machinations. However, something between them solidified and he and Sansa both recognized it. The strength and the love they shared was their talisman against darkness. They collected that ray of hope and saw now the light at the end of the tunnel.

The world was sweet and sometimes faith was rewarded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you're still enjoying this story. 🖤


	21. Everything I Own

Sansa rose as dawn spilled through the motel curtains and doused the room in gauzy light. That quiet serenity poured over Sandor. He slept with the ghost of a smile tracing his lips. Something in the solitude and sanctuary of dreams beckoned happiness for him. _Take the best of it, leave the rest of it._ The best of it was him. Always, it was him. The rest Sansa would leave behind and mourn the losses some other time.

Riveted, she studied his features now. Her fingertips lightly grazed his chest and the tufts of dark hair and taut muscle there. Her tender ministration eventually roused him, and they found themselves submerged in fresh peace and a new day. When he cracked his eyes open, the smile on his lips broadened and he didn’t ask why she looked at him like a waking dream because he already knew. Her wordless veneration was a language all its own, and he plucked that silent poetry from her lips with a kiss.

After their morning ritual of lovemaking, Sansa and Sandor left the no-name town and the quirky motel behind. The sun melted away the candy-colored dawn that’d seeped across the sky in powder pink and milky blue, sweet enough to drink it up.

The journey to Del Rio stretched wild and unwavering with the horizon expanding as far as Sansa could see. The highway followed the gentle rise and fall of the terrain and, as the miles slipped away, the lingering unease stayed well north. The Rio Grande emptied into the Amistad Reservoir and its rippling blue waters might as well have been an oasis set amongst the arid land.

On the other side of the bridge, Sandor’s truck ambled past signs for an orchard. Further down the road, the farmer sold his wares at a humble stand and they stopped to buy a basket of peaches. The kind old man pointed one crooked finger towards a gravel road lined with lush trees that overlooked a soft slope of rolling hills.

“A mighty fine spot for an afternoon picnic,” he’d said. 

Sandor responded to the innocent recommendation with husky laughter. He’d squeezed Sansa’s hand, and they exchanged a knowing smile before Sandor paid for the peaches and they were on their way again.

They might’ve declined a picnic if it weren’t for the overcast sky that offered calm warmth and heavenly reprieve from balmy heat. Sandor guided the truck up the dirt road and parked beneath an oak tree. Outside, he let down the tailgate and tossed a wool blanket in the truck’s bed.

Sansa carried the basket of peaches and took Sandor’s hand as they soaked in the Elysian view filtered through greens and golds. A breeze swept through the meadow’s wild blooms that swayed like a lover’s sigh.

She gazed up at Sandor. He looked more at ease now than she’d ever seen. A captivated smile rested incomplete on his lips, a mere suggestion of whatever softened his eyes and stilled his tongue.

“You’ve changed your mind about picnics, I see,” Sansa teased.

She set the peach basket on the tailgate and wrapped her arms around his middle. For a moment, he remained silent, but his fingers combed through the length of her hair.

“You made a believer out of me.”

Sandor never claimed God, but he looked at her sometimes—like he was now—as if he’d found something sacrosanct in the bond they shared and theirs was a religion of love and devotion to one another. The way he looked at her had evolved too. Pride grew amongst the lust and affection, beaming bright and unburdened of worry. Something had gentled inside of him; the shadows replaced with the light of peace.

Sandor delivered a warm kiss to her lips. His hands smoothed over the thin cotton of her blue dress down her sides and settled on her hips. Both the fabric and his touch were light and airy against her skin.

They’d seemed to have woken in a new reality—a world for just them two and theirs to conquer however they pleased. For now, the sweet simplicity of eating peaches and enjoying the quiet reprieve of a shaded afternoon was all they wanted and needed. Sansa climbed into the bed of the truck, well aware that Sandor watched the way her bottom peeked out from underneath her sundress. On all fours, she smiled over her shoulder at him and crawled to the back of the truck bed.

She giggled merrily and Sandor laughed along too as he climbed in after. Lounged against the back of the truck, they sat shoulder-to-shoulder. Sandor dusted off two peaches on the fabric of his white t-shirt and handed one to Sansa. She cradled it in her palms and admired the coral flesh and velveteen fuzz. She lifted her gaze to the golden light that suffused through gray wisps of clouds, everything rendered in vaporous softness.

Sandor studied her. The heaviness of his attention blanketed like a tender embrace. He gave a pleasured hum and kissed her cheek. His lips lingered there before dipping to her neck and then her collarbone. He settled back, took her hand, and lifted the peach to his lips. Her turn for admiration, Sansa watched as he contemplated the flaxen meadow.

His Stetson suited him, the vision of a real cowboy she’d dreamed of for so long—a strong man, brave and honest. More than that, he inspired something in her, an awakening perhaps, and she existed boundless in her own skin, free from worry and unafraid to be who she was. A smile ravished Sansa’s lips, and she squeezed his hand.

Sandor glanced at her as peach juice dripped down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

“I love you, you know that?” she said. Her voice was almost lost amongst a supple breeze that carried the scent of crushed grass and summer peaches.

Sandor’s hair hung loose around his shoulders and lifted on the wind. He replied first with a simple nod and a handsome smile as he chewed.

“I do know it. And I love you too.”

Sansa bit into her peach and relished the ambrosial burst of sweetness on her tongue. The flesh was firm but the juices fragrant and syrupy. They ran sticky down her fingers and to her wrist. It all came lucid like a daydream she’d spun from silky musings and fairytale wishes. 

A mystic haze seemed to roll across the valley despite how the dust had settled. Sansa and Sandor dined as much on the lustrous tranquility as they did their peaches. She closed her eyes and listened to the raven songs ringing in the nearby trees.

“Don’t you just feel a world away?” Sansa sighed. “I can’t tell what it is.”

She tried to trace the shape of whatever had shifted in the world but found that silhouette esoteric and hard to define. When she opened her eyes, Sandor nodded and filled in the spaces where she didn’t have the words. 

“I think it’s you and me,” he murmured as though it were a treasured secret sheltered between them and, when she matched his eyes, Sansa understood too.

The whole world and everything in it could’ve been stripped away and she might not have noticed, and neither would he. The only reality that mattered was the one they existed in together. Up above, the ravens squawked to one another and hopped along a thick, spindling tree branch.

Sandor shot an irritated glance towards the canopy above. “You, me, and them apparently.” He took another bite of the peach that looked small in his hand.

The sun momentarily broke through the clouds and Sansa observed the ravens and their glossy black wings. They quieted with her attention on them before flying off towards the warm shadows.

“Maybe they’re here to look after us,” she speculated.

Myths told that birds had a language all their own, enough that ancient civilizations augured omens from their songs and the way they moved with the wind. Sandor shifted his eyes to Sansa and smirked with dubious amusement.

“They’re more likely to shit all over my truck.”

There was that, too.

Sansa conceded with bubbling laughter and bit into her peach again. It wasn’t worth the effort to nibble delicately and avoid the sticky spray of juice. She went for it with blissful abandon that ruled the day.

“I like them,” she sighed and rested her head against the truck’s rear window. 

Sandor eyed the peach juice that dripped to the gentle swell of her cleavage. With a wicked smile, he leaned over and ran his tongue across the tops of her breasts. When he lifted his head, his lips lavished hers with a kiss that tasted honey sweet.

“You and your birds,” he muttered against her mouth.

They hadn’t talked openly about the uncanny synchronicities that they’d encountered, but each acknowledged them in their own way. A mysterious force had joined their union, not as an interloper but as a guide of sorts. In silent moments, Sansa felt its presence, an invisible hand intervening on their behalf and easing the path towards their future.

“You know what they say about owls?” she ventured and listened in rapt to how the wind moved through the trees and memorized the way it caressed her skin.

“What’s that?” Obvious intrigue stilled Sandor’s movements and drew his gaze. He wasn’t a spiritual man but seemed to feel it too.

“They’re guardians,” Sansa said with a wave of solemnity for their fallen friend. “And they can slip between this world and the next, coming and going as they please.”

Sansa lifted her eyes to Sandor. She wasn’t trying to make a believer out of him, only trying to understand for herself what it all meant.

“And who are these people who say that?” he asked.

Sansa shrugged. She didn’t honestly know. “People who believe in those sorts of things.”

“Do you believe it?”

Sansa didn’t believe in God and neither did he, but a series of strange events and impeccable timing had brought them together and seemed intent to see that they never part. She wasn’t deluded enough to believe that they were the sole benefactor of the universe’s good graces, but it had to count for something.

“Maybe,” was all Sansa said. “My sister is more of a believer in that sort of thing than I am.”

Sansa flashed a doleful smile, but it didn’t linger on her lips.

“You’re gonna miss her.”

Hesitation wove through his words, thick enough Sansa could trace the thread. It sounded like a statement, but she saw the question in his eyes and the guilt resurfacing too. He blamed himself for this predicament.

“I’ll miss all of my siblings,” she responded honestly because this question had an obvious and painful answer, though she’d been avoiding it. It hurt too much to think about, so she said nothing else and resumed eating her peach. 

“I’m sorry things turned out this way.” Sandor shared in the sorrow. She could tell by the hush of his voice and wavering way the words issued from his mouth. “You deserve a whole lot more than what you’ve been given.”

_More than what I can give,_ he left unspoken, but the dead words still haunted the space between them. Sansa took his hand and, with her knees gathered one on top of the other, she turned to him.

“It’s not about deserving things,” she insisted. “Sometimes things have a way of working out exactly how they’re meant to.”

A gentle smile lifted the corner of Sandor’s mouth, but the uncertainty remained with the incredulous way he stared at her.

“It’s like if our owl hadn’t flown into the window,” Sansa continued. “If I hadn’t come home that night and instead stayed with you a little longer. If you hadn’t responded to my letter. If I had never written to you in the first place. If none of those things had happened, then we wouldn’t have this very moment together. Right here and right now. Of all the paths that led me to you, not a single one is paved with regret.”

Sandor studied her with somber stillness, but Sansa watched the belief bloom in him, and he looked at her like a man who’d found faith. Or perhaps it was her he believed in; or them together, side-by-side. He broke with a beaming smile and tossed one arm across her shoulders. He drew her to his side and dug two more peaches from the basket.

“Do you regret any of it?” Sansa asked and took the peach from him. “You were free and now this.”

She too grappled with guilt over the fine mess they were in and worried that bitterness and resentment might present itself after a while. Sandor gazed towards the rolling countryside and his eyes shifted gently back and forth as he traced the hills. He gathered his words and spoke with deliberate conviction despite the low rumble of a quiet breath.

“Some people aren’t meant for certain things. I don’t know why.” He paused and shook his head as if still puzzling it out. “I’m not sure I’m meant for a life that’s truly free. My brother, war, prison, being on the run. Out of one cage and into another.”

He looked to her now with a willfulness behind his eyes, intent to make her understand. Sandor sat his peach in his lap and cradled Sansa’s cheek in one palm.

“It was never for anything, though. Even when I was drafted they said, ‘Think about the sacrifices we all make for our country.’ We all know that war wasn’t for anything and neither were the sacrifices.

“If anything happens to me, at least I’ll know it was for something. And if there was ever a sacrifice I’m honored to make, it would be to trade my freedom for yours; for you to live free from fear. You’ll always be the best thing I’ve ever had. I regret nothing that brought us together and nothing that’s happened ever since. I need you to know that now.”

Sansa nodded. Her heart pounded a wild rhythm in her chest. Sandor licked his bottom lip and kissed her with the same besotted wonderment as if it were the first time. And it might as well have been because the afternoon spent in soft rapture with one another felt like a new beginning. When the kiss ambled to a leisurely stop, Sandor rested his forehead against hers and smiled as if in a peaceful daze.

“Hold this for me,” he said, and handed off his peach to Sansa. The juices had left a stain in his lap, she noticed when Sandor dug in his back pocket.

With a peach in each hand, she gazed at the canopy above them and light breaking through the leaves. Sansa licked at the peach juice saturating her lips and, in the periphery of her vision, Sandor had stilled with something in his palm. Her eyes fell there. A small black box. He was holding a small black box.

Her hands shook. Peach juice ran down one. She didn’t care; not when it dribbled on her blue dress or when its flesh squashed ever so slightly under her tightening grip. Her heart would surely beat out of her chest. It picked up its pace. Her breaths quickened.

Sandor stared at her with a smile she’d never seen on him before—faintly hesitant but bursting with effervescent glee behind it, hardly obscured by the way he stared at her.

“I have a burning question.” The words spilled from his mouth on a trembling sigh, and he swallowed hard.

His hands shook too, and his trembling fingers opened the box to reveal a delicate gold braided band inside. A small round diamond sat solitary at the center. The ring stunned in its simplicity and the love it’d known over the years that hadn’t dulled its glimmer. His nervousness surfaced now. His gray eyes went wide and his lips lightly parted.

“Sansa, will you marry me?”

He looked momentarily ravaged by the possibility that she might say no, but a breathy squeal escaped her, and Sansa tossed the peaches behind her. They plopped to the ground next to the truck and rolled down the hill. She discarded their sweet delight for something far sweeter. It left her collapsing in on herself with resplendent joy.

“Yes!” Sansa shouted and scooted towards him. Her voice echoed amongst the trees and sent the ravens to the sky. She pawed at him with sticky hands and yanked him towards her, but quieted and matched his eyes. “In every lifetime, in every existence, yes.”

As if suspended in disbelief, Sandor nodded in quiet agreement. The gravity hadn’t taken hold and his eyes frantically traced her face as if he hadn’t yet registered her answer. The realization came quick and with chaotic joy. A sharp laugh escaped him. His lips exploded in a smile and he gracelessly threw his arms around her. They held onto one another in another bit of rediscovery; their embrace wholly familiar but reborn again in new light.

Sandor pulled the ring from the box and took her hand. He slipped the band on her finger and Sansa admired it with unbridled enchantment, eclipsed only by the pride she’d feel in being his wife.

“I know it isn’t much,” he said and shook his head. “It was my mother’s and back then rings weren’t like they are now and—”

“It’s perfect,” Sansa interjected. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she delivered a flurry of kisses to his lips, the tip of his nose, his forehead. “It’s all I want. You’re all I want.”

She’d known a charade of perfection—the kind people have to mortar over lest cracks appear in a crumbling facade. She found perfection in the imperfect—the tattered things, marred and irregular, that housed all that was truly special and splendid in this world.

“We won’t have a lot to our name, but we’ll have each other,” he promised. “That’s all I could ever want.”

“It’s all I want too,” Sansa vowed. She lifted one hand and rested it against the scars that suited him. Sunlight gleamed against the length of his raven hair. “You’re the dream. You were always the dream.”

He nodded, and he knew. Sandor might not have believed it before, but he believed it now. The words shared between them were their love song, but sometimes the words ran out and only the unspoken could do justice to what roamed in their hearts as wild and wondrous as the freedom they’d found.

They’d once made love beneath the wide-open sky, but they both recognized now the sanctity of keeping at least some things between them and them alone; no intruders from the bird songs and the summer breeze. They climbed into the truck and stole kisses—insatiable and yearning—offered by stop signs and brief moments along the way back to the motel he’d bought earlier for the night.

Inside their room, Sandor drew the curtains shut to blot out the sun and Sansa turned on the bedside lamp. With the room bathed in subdued incandescence, Sandor eased up behind her. His presence and warmth beckoned a flurry of butterflies to ravage Sansa’s belly. She licked her bottom lip and sunk against him, but her limbs trembled. He very well may have been the only thing still holding her up.

Sandor slipped one strap of her dress off her shoulder and his fingers grazed the length of her arm. He repeated the motion with the other strap and swept the hair from her neck. His lips dotted slow kisses there. Sansa reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“You’re trembling,” he observed with a gentle laugh.

Of course, he would notice. No sense in lying or masking the obvious, Sansa nodded. They’d made love more times than she could count. He’d seen every part of her, and she’d exposed everything there was to expose—her heart, body, and soul. This wasn’t about exposition, though. It was about plumbing the splendid depths of their love and it left her intoxicated. She turned in his arms and ran her palms up his chest.

“It’s anticipation,” she whispered as Sandor unzipped the back of her dress. It spilled to the floor and pooled at her feet.

He seemed to like that answer. He sucked on her bottom lip and yanked her towards him, enough that she could feel his hard cock in his jeans. In deft coordination, he bucked his hips and unhooked her bra that joined her dress on the floor.

“I’ll make it worth the wait,” he muttered, but his words waned at the end, interrupted with her mouth eagerly meeting his. He still tasted like peaches and his touch was just a sweet; heaven against her skin that was still warm and now flush. That warmth crept down her chest and gathered between her legs.

Sandor dipped his head and circled the tip of his tongue around her nipple. He sucked until it hardened, and Sansa’s head fell back with a shuddering sigh. He dropped to his knees and slid her underwear down her legs as he went.

Sansa’s hands rested on his shoulders and he gazed up at her from beneath his brows and where he normally paid her a devilish smile before commencing this part, a tenderness reigned supreme now. One hand gripped her ass and, with the other, his middle finger traced her slit, just gentle enough to send shivers through her but not enough to part her lips. His tongue followed the path, the very tip sinking between her folds in a deliberately slow lick.

Her knees buckled and she stumbled forward. Sandor exhaled a throaty chuckle that disappeared between her legs. Where his tongue merely teased a moment ago, it devoured now with firm pressure in every swipe. And just as Sansa’s moans cascaded from her mouth, his rhythm eased, and he punctuated this preview with a soft kiss between her legs before standing.

He licked at her pleasure glistening on his lips as Sansa shuffled backwards. When the back of her knees hit the mattress, she scooted to the center of the bed and spread her legs.

Sandor shed his shirt, and the muscled expanse of his chest heaved as his eyes roved over her body. Insatiable, he watched intently as Sansa’s hand trailed down her stomach and dipped between her legs. She closed her eyes and touched herself but heard his guttural groan and the clang of his belt buckle when his pants hit the floor. She opened her eyes again when the mattress dipped with his weight.

As he stroked himself, Sandor regarded her as he had their first night together. The hunger and heat behind his gaze intimated he’d consume her, but an anticipation resided with him now too as he crawled between Sansa’s legs.

And like that night, she wanted his weight on top of her, his skin hot against her, as close as he could be, deep inside, every part of their bodies meeting. In unhurried movements, he eased his cock between her legs and ground his shaft against her clit. Sansa bucked against him and gave a frantic nod to a question he hadn’t asked. She wanted him, but he laughed and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“I wasn’t finished,” he rasped with a devious smirk that lifted one corner of his mouth but left the other untouched.

She knew what it meant. She’d never known a man—either through experience or from girl talk—who spent as much time with his mouth between a woman’s legs as Sandor did. She’d meant to ask what enchanted him about the act—was it her, or had he always been this way? She wouldn’t ask now, and the answer didn’t really seem to matter. All she knew was that he’d mastered it and she’d happily reap the rewards of his boundless talent.

Sandor’s lips grazed her belly and teased with kisses down to the insides of her thighs. With his fingers clutched there, Sandor pushed her legs further apart and delved between them. His tongue swirled amongst her folds and Sansa’s fingers raked through his hair as she gave a breathy moan. Heat rippled through her. Her body hummed electric with his breathy pants between her legs and every lush and tender lick he gave. She propped herself up on her elbows and brushed the hair from his cheek.

Sandor paused and stared up at her. “You like watching?”

Sansa responded with a nod and a moan. It was all she could manage. His fingers gently spread her lower lips. He stared between her legs before setting in again. The man was ravenous when it came to this. He sucked on her clit and matched her eyes.

If she had her senses about her, Sansa might’ve marveled at the way he followed every sound she made, loud and soft alike; or how when he knew she was close, his tongue circled her opening and dipped inside; or perhaps how his lips were so supple and lush.

Her release was quick. Sansa cried out, loud enough that Sandor chuckled with his lips still between her legs. Perhaps that was the part she liked the most; how he reveled in it, how he knew he was the only man who could make her feel this way, how he was singular in this and so many other ways.

Sansa’s body released its tension, and she collapsed to the mattress in a dizzying daze, staring up at the ceiling as Sandor crawled next to her. Her limbs had gone limp, pliable like warm putty in his hands and he could fuck her any way he wanted, positioning her however he pleased, and it’d please her too. The man knew what he was doing.

Sandor rolled her on her side and settled behind her. Across the room and through the open bathroom door, the mirror held their reflection. Sandor’s lips curled in a wicked grin. He hooked his arm in the crook of her knee and lifted her leg.

“I like watching too,” he panted in her ear and nipped at her earlobe.

He positioned himself at her opening and sunk into her from behind but stopped with only half his cock inside. He reached around her, and his fingers swiped her nipple. Lips crushed against her neck, he stilled his movements.

“You want more?” he rasped, and when he turned his head to meet Sansa’s gaze in the mirror, his eyes darkened with lust, his smile wiped clean.

Sansa turned around and craned her neck to look at him. “You know I want it all,” she whispered against his mouth that still tasted like her.

He gathered up her hair that draped over her shoulder and tugged. “Do I? Beg for it,” he demanded, a growl in her ear. His fingers abandoned her nipple in favor of her clit.

“Please,” Sansa gasped against his mouth and while she was the one begging, he was the one coming undone. “I want all of it. Fuck me deep. You know I want it.”

His teeth clenched and body tightened. Sansa met his gaze in the mirror. His eyes didn’t seem to know where to look—between her legs as she swiveled her hips and took more of him in; the way she pouted; the way her lower lips were stretched around his thick shaft that was soaking wet from her.

“Mmm, you feel so good,” Sansa muttered. “Please fuck me. I want you.”

Sandor kissed her hard, his tongue invading her mouth, and when he thrust, Sansa gasped for how deep inside of her he was. He released a heavy moan and it rumbled against her back in a gorgeous vibration.

She returned her gaze to the mirror to watch. Sandor planted kisses along her neck but kept his eyes matched to hers in the reflection. He went slow so she could see. Sansa didn’t have to ask. Her lower lips were a deeper pink, and her clit was swollen and aching to be touched again.

Sansa arched into his chest, but her head lolled back against his shoulder. She panted and squirmed against him to match the rhythm, but her body trembled for the ecstasy roiling through her with each thrust. He wrapped her up in his strong arms, one across her chest and the other against her stomach. Sansa grasped his forearm with her left hand. Amongst the rhythm they’d set, she stared at the ring on her finger and Sandor followed her eyes.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered in her ear and nuzzled the tip of his nose against her cheek before pressing his lips there too. His ragged breaths bathed her skin.

He wanted to come, she could tell. He bit his bottom lip hard and grunted with every thrust. When it became too much, Sandor rolled Sansa to the mattress and eased his weight on top of her, his chest against her back. His knees pushed her legs further apart, and he buried himself inside of her with every roll of his hips. The pillow muffled Sansa’s cry of pleasure. She fisted the sheets and squeezed her eyes shut as her clit pressed against the bed linens.

A buzzing rapture ripped through her. Sandor drove himself into her with a deep thrust and then another. His rhythm was achingly slow and alluring, every inch of his thick cock easing out until only the tip remained before gliding back in. Sansa let go of herself, stripped bare of inhibitions beneath him as she whimpered his name and lifted her ass to meet his movements.

Head turned over her shoulder, she found his lips again; his plush lips that issued such sweet sounds—the guttural groans that elicited another flush between her legs.

“Come inside me,” she begged on a gasp, desperately wanting him to consume her in ways he hadn’t yet, to feel him pulse inside of her, to give him pleasure he hadn’t yet known.

“You know we can’t do that,” he tried to reason on a hoarse voice, but must’ve thought about it long enough that he bucked a quicker cadence now. He rutted on top of her, his hands planted on either side of her shoulders as he buried himself inside. Their resounding moans filled the room along with the dull clap of his hips slamming into her ass.

“Please. I want to feel you come inside me,” she pled again because it apparently drove him wild. “It’ll feel so good. Warm and wet. All for you.”

Sandor’s forehead, slick with sweat, collapsed to her shoulder where he muttered an expletive. He moaned in a way she’d never heard, moved deeper than he’d ever been before, and his body tightened like a bow on top of her. And when Sandor came, he did so with an intensity she’d never seen in him and Sansa came right along with him, encouraged by how his cock pulsed inside of her and filled her up with the warmth of his seed.

His body loosened and she felt more of his weight pressing into her. Sansa gazed over her shoulder. When she met his mouth, his tongue eagerly parted her lips with a fervent kiss, and he gave a faint groan.

Sansa felt his legs quaking, weak as he lifted himself from her and rose to his knees. She turned over on the rumpled bed linens as she fought to catch her breath. Sandor wiped away the strands of hair that stuck to his cheeks and stared down at her, his eyes razing her body until they landed between her legs.

With one hand, he gripped the inside of her thigh and encouraged her legs to spread. Sansa felt his seed spilling out of her, warm against her lower lips and mingled amongst her own wetness. Sandor drew a deep breath, ran his hand over his mouth, and shook his head with enthralled wonderment.

“Fuck, that’s hot.” He lit up with pride at leaving his mark.

A coquettish smile crept across Sansa’s lips as she contemplated him in the soft light. She spread her legs further for him, empowered by the ravenous way he still stared at her and how his chest heaved with lingering desire.

Sandor collapsed on top of her but propped himself on his elbows as he cupped her cheek. He delivered a sultry and languid kiss to her lips, and she could tell he wanted more by that alone. Still half-hard, his cock rested between her legs and traipsed between her folds in slow movements.

“You are a very bad girl,” he whispered, but the admonition was deliberate and firm, a rhythm that matched the way he ground against her. Obvious endearment and a deep rumbling laugh stole all its seriousness, though.

“Hmm, what happens to bad girls?” Sansa teased, wrapped her legs around his hips, and arched her back until her breasts pressed against his chest.

Sandor tipped his head to the armchair across the room. “I don’t know about the others, but _my_ bad girl is gonna get bent over that chair and taught a lesson.”

He nipped her bottom lip and rolled off of her. With one arm tossed over his eyes, the other hand palmed the mattress as he reached for her. Sansa crawled to his side and softly kissed his lips.

“Just give me one minute,” she murmured and slid to the edge of the bed.

On wobbly steps, Sansa retreated to the bathroom and cleaned up as best she could, recalling her mother’s wisdom of peeing after sex. Good advice in the best of times, it seemed especially prudent now. A bad girl, indeed.

She brushed out her hair in the mirror and smiled mischievously when her eyes drifted to the armchair and she fantasized about her impending “punishment”.

When Sansa padded back into the room and onto the bed, Sandor pulled his arm from his face and cracked a handsome smile. He turned to his side and pulled her into his arms. With her back against his chest, he stroked her skin with gentleness she’d never initially expected in him but had come to admire.

He seemed to marvel at it too, the parts of himself he’d found changed because of her. He never said so much, but she saw it in the way he looked at her sometimes, the smiles he gave, the afterglow of their lovemaking. One large hand settled at her stomach and Sansa covered over it with her own. She knew what he was thinking.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and her fingers interlaced with his. “I know we shouldn’t have done that, especially not under these circumstances.”

Sandor propped himself up on his elbow and stared down at her as Sansa rolled to her back. His fingertips trailed between her breasts and circled her belly in a tender touch.

“Don’t be sorry. You’re gonna be my wife and someday, when the time is right, we’ll make a baby.”

With a burst of joy, Sansa smiled up at him. Sandor leaned forward and kissed her forehead. He gazed down at her again and brushed his fingertips across her cheek now.

“Father Bill is ordained,” he announced after a moment of peaceful quiet where he seemed to admire her. A satisfied smile danced across his lips. “I asked Bronn about it.”

Sansa’s brows knit together in confusion. She didn’t know this Father Bill and didn’t understand why a priest was ushering them across the border. It seemed shady for a purported man of God. Sandor’s fingers traipsed along her collarbone in a velvet-soft touch and his eyes followed the movement.

“You wanna get married tomorrow?” With a beaming smile, he stared up at her from beneath his brows.

Sansa abruptly sat up and gasped. She nearly collided with him, her forehead coming close to bashing him in the nose. Her chest rose and fell with sharp breaths.

“Tomorrow?” she squealed and bounced on the mattress.

A deep laugh escaped Sandor, and he nodded. Stunned, her mouth hung open, but no words came.

“It’s fine if you don’t, I just thought—”

“Yes!” Sansa hollered and bisected his backpedaling with enough gusto that it catapulted her into his arms again.

Her lips crashed against his and Sandor chuckled once more, but now into her demanding kiss. He toppled to the mattress as she climbed on top of him.

“I don’t know how legal or official it will be without a license,” he laughed again, and his hands settled at her hips. He shrugged, and not for any sudden doubts he might have had. Rather, Sansa sensed stray tendrils of guilt at not being able to give her what he thought she deserved.

“I don’t care!” she declared towards the ceiling with her arms outstretched and eyes shut. “We’re getting married!”

She fell to his chest, snaked her arms around his neck, rolled off, and pulled him on top of her with more vigorous insistence.

“It will be more than official for me,” she assured and coiled her legs around his hips, arms around his shoulders, and squeezed tighter. “I don’t want to go another day without being your wife!” she demanded on something close to a shout.

“Good,” Sandor agreed and smiled down at her in yet another new way—replete with untamed joy and enraptured by her. It seemed their love was ever evolving. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

For the rest of the evening, they raced to define the ineffable between them that could only be described now in the way they touched one another, and the words whispered between them. And when that wasn’t enough, no more words were exchanged, and it all seemed like consummating their new beginning.

* * *

Gravel crackled beneath the truck’s tires in a slow litany of pops. Sandor rolled at a walking pace, though the path was about to meet a dead end. Concern gathered in the margins of an otherwise quiet mind. He didn’t know Father Bill and, though he extended trust through Bronn’s good word, wariness took hold.

Sansa sat up in the passenger seat and eyed the road overgrown with shrubbery. The creek they were looking for was really just a dried-up ditch praying for rain.

“That’s it.” Sansa pointed to the side of the road and the sun-bleached church.

It had no door to speak of, just a gaping hole in the front. The spire had snapped off the steeple and laid broken on the ground. Sandor pulled into a dried patch of earth free of brush and tall grass. He killed the engine and stared out the windshield at the abandoned church.

Relentless wind had piled up dirt against its dilapidated wooden steps. Rotted out clapboard siding peeled away from sinking beams and most of the windows had been busted out except a few too high for hoodlums to reach. Opalescent glass filled those spaces, probably once beautiful but now covered in grime. The church withered away on the forgotten gravel road. _Ashes to ashes, dust to dust._ A fitting end, he supposed.

Outside, cicadas rattled perhaps their last summer song amongst the trees. It’d be autumn soon. A forgotten joy, Sandor might’ve eagerly anticipated the chilly breeze and colorful leaves, but autumns in Mexico probably didn’t offer such sweetness of gray days and cozy nights, so he let the dream die.

The sun light filtered through cloud cover and cast everything in a dull haze. They were early. Sandor had made sure of it, leaving nothing up to chance. He couldn’t afford to anymore. On the other side of the church, a man sat in a Chevy rotting with rust and its tires caked with dried mud.

Sandor turned to Sansa and took her hand. She wore the closest thing to a wedding gown she had with her—a thin white sun dress patterned with delicate black roses, not unlike the ones that used to adorn her letters. That seemed another lifetime, a black existence that she’d burned through to bring the light.

She smiled so sweetly and gazed down at the small bouquet of wild daisies she’d plucked from the ground outside their motel. She’d even tucked a few in her hair.

“Are you happy?” Sandor asked, though he knew well enough she’d lie and say that she was to spare him. What woman could truly be happy with the circumstances they were in—on the run and getting married at an abandoned church probably haunted by its own past?

Apparently her. Sansa stunned in the front seat of his truck, wanting for so little but deserving the entire world. Her cheeks flushed petal pink and her full lips parted with a bright smile. Her eyes danced with joy, no trace of a lie or deception for his sake.

“I am.” She nodded and gripped his hand. Her thumb swept over his ring finger and he surmised her thoughts by the dreamy smile that graced her lips and softened her eyes.

A simple life together was all she really wanted. She’d told him this morning as she brushed out his hair. He’d sat at the edge of the motel bed with Sansa behind him and her long legs straddling his hips. With his eyes closed, he’d relished the gentle hum of her voice, the feel of her brush working through his hair, and the warmth of the kisses she trailed down his neck.

Sandor draped one arm along the back of the seat and leaned towards her. His hat lifted slightly as he rested his forehead against her’s.

“We’ll make it work,” he muttered. “You look gorgeous, little bird.”

Sansa exhaled a quiet laugh that sounded like peace to him, a steady state of acceptance and calm. “Thank you. And you look so handsome.”

Though not quite a lie, she’d paid him a hyperbolic compliment. Sandor had managed the best he could with a white linen shirt rolled to his elbows and the top few buttons unfastened. He’d donned a pair of black jeans, his black boots, and, of course, his treasured Stetson.

“Let’s go get married,” Sandor said with another gentle kiss.

Out of the truck, he took Sansa’s hand, and they approached the church. A quiet breeze placated the sultry heat that would’ve stifled if it weren’t for the blessed clouds blanketing the sky and the promise of an afternoon storm.

The Chevy’s door swung open with a metallic groan and a man, Father Bill, hopped out and began towards them. He was short and built like a whiskey barrel; stocky around the middle and everything about him blunted and squared—his thick jaw, stubby fingers, and trunk-like legs. He walked bowlegged and dawdling. Aviators obscured his eyes, and a tan calf-skin hat hid straw-colored curls that still spilled out underneath. His skin looked like leather, as cracked and russet as the parched earth beneath their feet.

“Sandor,” he greeted with sharp emphasis, almost a bark. He jabbed his hand out for a shake but wielded it forcefully like a weapon.

Sandor shook the man’s hand and evaluated him with one quick sweep. He was clearly a quintessential Texas boy, born and bred, and would probably drunkenly shout that bit of information from a barstool without anyone asking. Most men like that were just harmless idiots, but something not quite harmless stirred in Father Bill.

He flashed a smile at Sansa, revealing a couple gold teeth and a few missing altogether. She clung to Sandor’s arm and squeezed his hand.

“This is my fiancee, Sansa,” Sandor introduced on her behalf to spare her the courtesy men like Father Bill expected from women. Sandor had just met him, but he knew well enough that the likes of Father Bill didn’t deserve Sansa’s manners.

“Nice to meet you,” she said tepidly, and Sandor shifted enough to shelter her halfway behind him.

Father Bill didn’t respond, a detail that irritated Sandor enough that he almost called him on it. The man brusquely barreled past the platitudes and right into business.

“Bronn told you the plan,” Father Bill declared more than confirmed with his hands resting on his hips and framing a large silver belt buckle. “It’s a good thing y’all are leaving.”

Father Bill rumbled with laughter and offered no explanation when his mirth thinned out, and he quieted again. Sandor didn’t ask.

“Thank you for helping us,” was all he said with sterile appreciation. Something about the man couldn’t inspire genuine gratitude in Sandor. “Once we’re there and settled, I’ll need to see about work.”

“It’s cheap living,” Father Bill informed and folded his arms over his chest, but they rested on top of his belly. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. Ex pats don’t have problems finding work. I hear you have enough funds to hold you over.”

The conversation about compensation was necessary, but the sudden shift towards money matters squandered what little good grace Sandor was willing to offer. He stood tall, squared his shoulders, and peered at Father Bill from beneath the brim of his hat.

“Before we do this, I want to know what I’ll owe you.”

“We’ll settle up later,” Father Bill responded, and his voice quieted. “Don’t worry about that now.”

Sandor wasn’t dense enough to believe Father Bill was all that generous. The man made his living importing illegal goods, a lucrative operation. Men like him didn’t give handouts for the hell of it and certainly not to strangers.

“It’s not about worry,” Sandor countered with rising agitation. “I’m not getting myself and Sansa into something if I don’t know what the costs are upfront.”

“I owed Bronn a favor. He’s cashing it in,” Father Bill parroted from Sandor’s conversation with Bronn. The fact that neither man would divulge what exactly had earned Bronn such a tremendous favor left Sandor ill at ease. “I’ll house and feed you both for a week, but then you’re on your own. The favor doesn’t extend beyond that. If you need more from me, we’ll talk cost then.”

Father Bill unfolded his arms and patted Sandor on the shoulder. His lips split with a grin. “I understand you two need another service from me.”

Sansa’s grip on Sandor’s hand loosened some, and she swept her thumb across his knuckles. The simple, loving gesture chased away the worries that crowded in at the edges.

“Yes. We want to get married,” Sandor replied and, by instinct, turned to Sansa. Eyes alight, she smiled up at him.

Father Bill rustled with another chuckle and started towards the church.

“Well, you picked the right place,” he hollered over his shoulder and motioned his head for Sansa and Sandor to follow. “We’ll go inside. It’ll get us out of the elements. Watch out for rattlesnakes, though.”

Sandor held onto Sansa’s hand and helped her negotiate the lopsided steps into the church. The inside had fared better against the elements. The place was mostly gutted with no alter or religious artifacts, just two lonely pews facing the back of the church. Up above, two holes had been punched through the roof and birds had nested where a bell once resided.

Sansa looped her arm in Sandor’s and rested her other hand on his elbow. The wide wooden floorboards were hollow underneath and gave a dull thud with each step they took together towards the back of the church.

“What faith are you two?” Father Bill asked as he pulled off his sunglasses and slid them into the front pocket of his plaid shirt.

Sansa turned to Sandor. They stood face-to-face, hand-in-hand. Sunlight momentarily broke through the clouds and spilled through an empty hole where a window had once been. It lit up Sansa’s hair like peaches and gold. The congruent smile they gave said it all. Neither claimed religion but had found faith in each other. When Father Bill cleared his throat, Sandor glanced at him and shook his head.

“I’ll keep it simple then,” Father Bill replied and clasped his hands together.

For a few quiet moments, he gazed at an innocuous spot on the floor and drew several deep breaths as if gathering his words. Though still not pious in any sense of the word, something shifted in the man. His square edges seemed to smooth out, and he too inherited some solemn veneration for this sacred rite.

Sandor returned his gaze to Sansa and her lips parted with a ragged breath and her skin had paled. Her hands trembled but so too did his and he couldn’t quite tell where her nervous quivering ended and his began. He inched closer to her, and she did the same. Toe-to-toe, they stood, and she stared up at him with heartfelt reverie as if they were standing on hallowed ground of their own creation. And they might as well have been.

“We’re here to join you not just in matrimony of the body and its earthly existence, but a union of your souls immortal,” Father Bill began, and each word spoken felt like breathing to life all they’d been manifesting. “Let nothing and no one part in death the bond you forged together in this life. Eternal and transcendent, it is sacred beyond the binds of mortality. May it never twilight and, should it know darkness, may the light of the love you share triumph over the hardships you endure as one. Grow in love and go forth in trust. As above, so below—divinity exists in the sanctity of your union. Cherish it and you shall know peace and joy and love everlasting.”

Father Bill paused and looked to Sandor. “Do you, Sandor, take Sansa as your wife, to love and to cherish, in this life and beyond, always and forevermore?”

Sandor’s throat constricted with the lump there. A tranquil chill worked through him. It tingled all the way down his arms and into the tips of his fingers.

“I do,” he whispered and clung to Sansa’s hands. The stems of her daisies crushed beneath the pressure, but she beamed up at him so fondly, he was certain this was all just a dream.

“Do you, Sansa, take Sandor as your husband, to love and to cherish, in this life and beyond, always and forevermore?”

Sansa nodded as tears gathered in her eyes. She gazed at him with such sweet devotion and so utterly transfixed that she almost forgot to speak. When she did, her vow came as a breathless laugh, ringing with joy as bright as that missing bell up above them.

“I do.”

“If you have vows or words for one another, say them now,” Father Bill prompted and turned to Sandor first.

Vows weren’t meant for a single moment, he knew, nor were they words spoken that were then forgotten. All this time, he and Sansa had been making vows to each other—tender declarations spoken on whispers meant for only the other to hear; secrets between the two of them that forged their bond and the roots of their love had grown deep and unbreakable. They’d continue to make those vows as seasons changed and years passed.

The words they spoke now were simple, and the ones meant for this moment, but would echo through their life together. Gathering those words felt an awful lot like trying to snatch up leaves on the breeze. Sandor didn’t know which one to pluck and say to her now, so he settled for what he needed her to know in this moment.

“You’re all I need. As long as we always have each other, Sansa. I mean it, you are everything to me. You’ve given me everything.”

His throat restricted again, and he lost his breath. The rest of the words rested on his tongue, but Sansa nodded because she understood. She always understood. She shifted closer to him, her body warm against his. She reached up and her hands cradled his face.

“We will,” she assured on a tender sigh. “I’m never going anywhere. And you will always be loved and cherished, Sandor. Always. You are such a gift.”

Sandor bit his bottom lip hard and fought the instinct to cast his bleary eyes away. Instead, he scooped her up in his arms and held her tight. With one hand at the back of her head, his fingers disappeared amongst her hair. He closed his eyes to memorize the moment—the feel of her holding onto him for dear life; the floral scent of her perfume; the sound of her voice; the softness of her skin.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Father Bill said with a respectable amount of hesitation to interrupt. “You know the rest. I’ll leave you to it.”

Father Bill scooted around them and retreated outside. They wouldn’t have needed him. He was a trespasser to the sanctity of their union that’d been built long before they stepped into the run-down church. Sandor’s hands settled on Sansa’s hips and he pulled away to gaze down at her.

“Can I kiss you now?” he requested on a quiet laugh, peacefully at ease. Something had stilled in him. He couldn’t say what, but that abatement felt like a release long since coming. He sunk into the sensation and let it take hold.

With her arms tossed around his neck, Sansa rolled to her toes. “You better.”

His lips pressed against hers and he savored the warmth of a simple kiss that Sansa was quick to deepen. The promise of a new life infused the moment, and they clung onto one another, desperate to be closer. Sandor wrapped her up and kissed her soundly. His little bird, his wife.

When the kiss broke, he took her by the hand and led her to the church pew where they sat next to one another. It was strong despite the cruelty of the elements and faithfully endured the storms it’d weathered.

Tucked against his side, Sansa stroked a daisy petal with her finger. In the milky light filtering through the opaque glass, she looked luminous. A still gray encompassed the church. It rendered the battered floorboards and ramshackle walls silken and pale, almost enchanting. Sandor cast a proud smile at Sansa who gazed so tenderly at the humble bouquet in her hands.

“I’m sure this isn’t what you envisioned for your wedding day,” he remarked and glanced around the church once more. 

Full of grace and more love than he’d ever known, Sansa lifted her eyes to him and took his hand. She studied the front of the church, emptied of an alter and with dust and dried leaves congregating on the floor. Her eyes shifted around the space as if tracing long-lost memories and dreams deserted.

“I envisioned many things that wouldn’t have mattered,” she said softly. “The color of napkins, who’d sit where, the women I would have made my bridesmaids, the same ones who wouldn’t speak to me after I left Kansas City.”

She stared at him and seemed to fight the urge to pick off the daisy petals. “It seems so silly now.”

Sandor shrugged and japed, “Well, the wrong color napkins can really make or break a party.”

Her placid joy erupted into merry laughter, and Sandor would gladly imbibe on the sound of her happiness until it left him love-drunk and delirious. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer.

“A big wedding doesn’t matter if the marriage is already loveless and fading at the alter,” Sansa continued on a silvery voice. “Our wedding was perfect. What it lacks in napkins, it makes up for in love. Darling, your letters used to come to me all tattered, but the heart of them was inside and more soulful than some pristine gold-leaf stationery that might’ve housed empty words. It’s a bit like that. And it’s everything I could ever want because you’re in it.”

She sat up and shifted towards him to match his gaze. “I wouldn’t trade this for anything,” she insisted, but her voice was a murmur as calm as an open sea he’d gladly drift away on. “I never would. Not then and not now.” An easy smile crept across her lips. “You’re my husband and my best friend.”

She rested her head against his shoulder and nuzzled her cheek there. “And you’re my wife and my best friend too,” he muttered against the top of her head and breathed her in.

A breeze swept through the church like a cool caress and kicked up the leaves that swirled before settling once more. In the silent serenity and muted light, Sandor looked to where the cross would have been. That sacred space was vacant, much like the rest of the church. It seemed an apt place for them to wed. He’d pour his faith into her and the life they’d build together. They didn’t need the trappings of false religion or the accoutrements of hollow matrimony. They only needed each other.

“You two about ready?” Father Bill called from outside with subtle impatience he tried to hide. Sandor heard it just fine.

He lifted Sansa’s hand to his lips and placed a kiss to her knuckles. “You ready to start our life together?”

She flashed a pretty smile and gave an eager nod that dislodged a daisy in her hair. Sandor stood and helped her to her feet. Sansa looped her arm in his again and, as man and wife, they retreated down the aisle to the gaping hole where the church’s door had once been.

They stepped outside and more clouds had gathered in steady columns across the sky. The air was thicker too, dense with a blanket of humidity. With his back to them, Father Bill stood near the gravel road with his arms crossed. Just as Sandor was about to toss him some benefit of the doubt for standing sentry, the gravel crackled with tires, a vehicle coming.

Sandor stilled. No one else should be here. That wasn’t part of the plan. His body went rigid and so too did Sansa’s beside him. She gaped up at him for an explanation he didn’t have.

From behind the overgrowth of tall grass, a car appeared—matte black, hearse-like, and all too familiar.

“We gotta go,” Sandor insisted on a frantic whisper. He gripped Sansa’s hand and hurried down the church’s steps, but the car rolled to a stop perpendicular to the back end of Sandor’s truck.

With no way out, Sandor spun to Father Bill who folded his arms over his chest and steadied his nonplussed gaze to the black car he obviously was expecting.

The car’s door flung open, and a man dressed in all black slowly climbed out. Sandor had seen the car racing towards a crime scene and it’d conveniently stumbled upon the grave Sandor dug for a monster who deserved his fate, but he’d never seen the passenger inside.

“Sandor.” His name shook from Sansa’s lips and her fingers coiled around his bicep, holding on as if he might slip away. 

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” was his vow, yet another one spoken on what should be a joyous day, and Sandor hoped like hell he could keep it.

His eyes darted between Father Bill and the man who approached them. With his head down turned, a black cowboy hat obscured his face. He walked with a deliberate gait and his black boots hit the ground with solid intent. The man lifted his head and tipped his hat to Father Bill who repaid the gesture. Straight black hair grew past his ears and jutted out from underneath the hat. Beneath his nose rested a thick black mustache with an off-centered gray patch.

Sansa gasped, and her body trembled against him. Sandor’s gaze shifted to her and her face had gone milk white and eyes wide with abject terror.

“It’s him,” she whispered. Her words came fraught and thin with fear. “That’s the stranger who’s been in Devil Creek.”

“Get behind me,” Sandor insisted as the man approached them. He shoved Sansa behind him and shielded her body with his. Sandor’s gun was in his truck. His eyes darted there and then back to the man in black. His two-toned mustache twitched with a faint smile.

“What the fuck is going on?” Sandor demanded to Father Bill who pushed dirt around with the tip of his boot but didn’t answer.

Neither did the man in black. He halted his approach when another vehicle rolled down the gravel road towards them. Sansa clawed at the back of Sandor’s shirt, balling up the fabric in her fists and pressing her cheek against him. He could feel the humid bursts of her frantic breaths through the fabric.

The gun. He needed his gun. His stomach roiled. He would be sick. The fucking sun burned despite the clouds. His skin roasted hot. Their options dwindled as the other car neared. The man in black held out one hand to Sandor, a motion for him to not make a move. Sandor’s thoughts must’ve been that obvious. Either that or this stranger was reading him in ways most others couldn’t, peeling back the inscrutable to see the panic rising beneath. 

The hood of a blue car peeked around the shrubbery and rolled slowly until it lurched to a stop. Sandor’s heart—pounding like a war drum in his chest—plummeted to his stomach when he read the letters printed on the side of the car.

Highway Patrol.

When the car stopped, an officer climbed out of the driver’s seat and from the passenger side Clyde Griffin emerged. He cast only a furtive glance at Sandor but approached Father Bill. From his back pocket, Griff produced a stack of cash that Father Bill greedily accepted with the fervor of a man who’d only been biding his time to get paid. With his cash in hand, Father Bill quickly made for his truck, climbed inside, and drove away.

In suspended disbelief, Sandor watched the scene unfold as if floating outside of himself—his bride holding onto him with the knowledge that they’d soon be parted; the betrayal not even Sandor would’ve seen coming; the collusion clear as day now. No sooner had the pieces come together, it all came crashing down around him. Of course, it did. It always did. He’d never know simple joy. Some unknown God had deemed that too much for him.

His senses returned. With them came a violent torrent of anger. It lashed within him like a tumultuous sea pounding a helpless shore. Sandor let go of Sansa’s hand and bounded towards Griff. He was blinded by rage and the hurt was profound in its depths.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” he bellowed, and the outburst sent a flock of ravens to the sky. Their black wings beat against the rising wind. “You set this up!”

Singular in his focus, Sandor hadn’t seen the man in black approach, not until he intervened and planted himself between Griff, who looked on with solemn disappointment he had no right to, and Sandor who only now registered the tremors that ravaged his body. His limbs wailed for a release to his fury.

“Let’s not make a scene,” the man in black warned and turned to Sandor who glowered in return. He had a lot of nerve; a lot of bravery too. Either that or stupidity. Sandor couldn’t quite tell.

The man’s accent was northern with its long, flat tones and, though he donned a fine leather hat and even finer boots, the charade didn’t suit him. He reached slowly towards the front pocket of his shirt and dug inside.

In one movement, he flipped open a black bifold wallet that wasn’t a wallet after all. When he jutted the thing towards Sandor, it held a gold badge emblazoned with blue letters and the man’s credentials underneath. Sandor didn’t need the introduction. The three letters spoke for themselves.

“I’m Special Agent Errol Ambrose with the FBI.” The man’s eyes flickered to Sansa. “I’m gonna need you both to come with me.”

“Do as he says,” Griff cautioned, as if they had a choice.


	22. Ramble On

Her first time meeting Clyde Griffin wasn’t meant to be this way. Of all the people in Sandor’s life, this man meant the most; a father figure, a friend, a confidant. Sansa was supposed to smile and charm and assure him that Sandor’s heart was safe with her.

Instead, Clyde had paid her a warm introduction at tremendous odds with the vitriol Sandor leveled at the man. Sansa remembered her manners but hadn’t forgotten her allegiance. Outside the church, she’d gripped Sandor’s forearm that was taut and hard with tension, much like the rest of his body. They’d regarded Clyde with a united front of stony reserve.

The highway patrol man led the way along the town’s cracked roads towards the police station. They’d allowed Sandor to take his truck, but Agent Ambrose took up the rear of the caravan.

The message was clear. No funny business. No sudden moves to escape. They were caught. This was the end of the line.

Sordid devastation and incipient loss quick upon her, Sansa wanted to cry and beg.

“We aren’t under arrest,” Sandor said and took her hand. “If we were, they would’ve done it by now and spared us this pomp and circumstance.”

He meant to comfort through sheer logic, but his ashen face lined with worry and so much disappointment gave him away. Sansa gnawed her bottom lip and battled the urge to be sick.

The unlikely caravan rolled into the small, unpaved lot of an even smaller police station. Loose gravel shifted beneath the tires of Sandor’s truck. When he killed the engine, he turned to Sansa as the others spilled from their vehicles.

“Just follow my lead,” he advised and kissed her. That kiss grew in depth and yearning and with a rising heat, but not for desire, only desperation. _He thinks it will be the last,_ Sansa realized with sobering clarity. When the kiss broke, the agony in his eyes confirmed it.

Outside of the truck, they followed Agent Ambrose and Clyde towards the stucco building with a Spanish tile roof. Vines grew up the side, reaching towards the sunlight now obscured behind gathering clouds. For as lush as the outside might’ve been with invading roots and tall grass, the inside of the building was sterile with white tile floors. The walls were just as white, though they’d yellowed at the corners where dust storms must’ve seeped in through leaky windows.

Sansa gripped Sandor’s hand and warily eyed Agent Ambrose marching just a few steps in front of them. She hadn’t believed him at first. Anyone could claim to be a cop or an FBI agent or anything else they wanted. For all she knew, he’d only said it to gain their trust and Sandor had his suspicions too, but Clyde’s presence blotted out doubt and solidified the trouble they were in.

As they approached a closed door at the end of the hall, Sansa’s eyes swept to Sandor in a worried gaze. He didn’t notice. He was boring a hole right through the back of Clyde’s head with the intensity of hatred Sansa had never seen in him. Or perhaps it was hurt. She didn’t know for sure and all that anger and sadness coiled around each other in a tangled mess, the parts inextricable from the whole.

Agent Ambrose pushed through a wood door at the end of the hall and held it open for them. He smiled at Sansa as she passed the threshold. The revelation of his true identity did little to dampen the eeriness he carried with him. Sandor glared at the man.

With no windows, only an overhead fluorescent light illuminated the drab and dingy space in a yellow glow. Clyde sat on one side of a metal table, the room’s only feature. Nothing hung on the mottled gray walls, and no other furniture filled the space. Sandor pulled out a metal folding chair for Sansa before sitting next to her with his arm draped across the chair’s back. His fingers gripped her shoulder.

“Would anyone like a coffee?” Agent Ambrose offered and, though it sounded like a polite gesture, the question was ridiculous on several fronts, least of which the room’s stifling heat.

When neither Sansa nor Sandor responded or even stirred at the question, Clyde shook his head but said nothing. Agent Ambrose cantered from the room and down the hall in a deliberate rhythm.

Long after the sound of his boots faded away, the silence reigned. Sandor glowered across the table with relentless tenacity and the embers of slow fury burning in him. Clyde didn’t budge. He didn’t lower his eyes. He stared back, unafraid and faintly irritated it seemed. His white mustache twitched, and his pale eyes narrowed. The intensity surmounted and filled the space with oppressive unease that battled the heat for what was more uncomfortable.

Sandor eased back in his seat and rested one hand on the table. Clyde mirrored his movements, and neither broke their stare. Sansa thought to speak and perhaps dispel the tension before everything erupted. Instead, she nervously fidgeted and toyed with the hem of her dress, the prettiest one she’d packed, and now it would forever be her wedding gown. A sharp sliver of sadness sliced through her. _My wedding day._

Clyde drummed his fingertips against the metal table and finally broke the silence.

“Don’t look at me like that,” his voice rumbled deep, almost as deep as Sandor’s. They matched one another in more than just the feverish severity roiling beneath a stoic facade.

“You’re lucky it’s only a look.” Sandor hurled his surly response across the table with the precision of a sniper.

It only further incensed Clyde. He shifted to the edge of his seat and prodded the table as his voice crescendoed.

“Here you are!” he hollered. “Sitting in this fine town’s sheriff’s office and you’re still running your goddamn mouth! Do you honestly think I would fuck you over?” Clyde’s eyes softened some when they drifted to Sansa, and so too did his voice. “Excuse my language, darlin’.”

“Don’t you talk to my wife! What the hell am I supposed to think?” Sandor seethed and pulled Sansa even closer to him until the base of their chairs touched and she was flush against his side. His voice held the ominous undercurrent of a grave warning. “A betrayal like this, you better count your blessings and watch your back. I’ll be coming for you. Fucking dusty old man. I swear to God, I’ll break every bone in your body.”

Clyde scowled and his face flushed beet red as his hands curled into fists. Sandor drew a deep breath in a prelude to spouting off more threats, perhaps. Sansa gently gripped his thigh and turned to him.

“Sweetheart,” she soothed, and the tension lifted some when Clyde broke with thundering laughter.

He folded his arms over his chest, and a deep chuckle still rippled through his voice.

“You’re a stubborn bastard, you know that? You go on and listen to your better half.”

The beginning of Sandor’s protest was interrupted as Agent Ambrose pounded down the hall and into the room with a blue folder tucked beneath his arm. In one hand, he carried a cassette recorder and, in the other, a small Styrofoam cup that he carefully placed on the table. He sat next to Clyde but didn’t speak.

Instead, he positioned the tape recorder until it was perfectly parallel to the edge of the table. He did the same with the blue folder. From his shirt’s front pocket, he pulled free a ball-point pen. When he set it to the table, he positioned the cap to point towards his coffee cup that he gingerly sipped and just as gingerly set down again.

With each agonizing ministration that looked more ritualistic than practical, Sansa felt Sandor grow increasingly rigid against her and he released a sharp, agitated breath. Satisfied with his setup, Agent Ambrose flashed a bright smile and eased back in his seat with his hands planted on his knees.

“Are one of you gonna say something or are we just gonna stare at each other?” Sandor huffed and flung his hand towards Agent Ambrose. “Go on and get it over with. Whatever it is you want with me—”

“We’re not here to talk to you,” Ambrose interjected and shifted his eyes to Sansa. So too did Clyde and then Sandor.

With all eyes in the room on her, Sansa’s back peeled away from the chair. She cleared her throat and inadvertently released a tremulous sigh. Sandor pulled his arm from behind her and took her hand in his lap. With their fingers interlaced, he gave a gentle squeeze as if to say, _“We’re in this together. Whatever it is.”_

“It’s nothing to be concerned about,” Ambrose assured after heavy silence and renewed unease grew like wild weeds, untamed and uncontrolled. “I just want to talk, and I have one or two questions.”

Sandor gave an adamant shake of his head and a bitter snort. “We’re gonna need a lawyer for this conversation.”

Clyde exchanged a glance with Ambrose and whatever passed between them left Sansa’s belly a hollow pit overcome with nausea. A lawyer. She didn’t have money for a lawyer. The reality of the situation slammed into her now. Her eyes burned with tears.

“No, you won’t,” Clyde intervened and shook his head.

Ambrose agreed with a nod and glanced at Clyde again. “That’s why he’s here.”

“He ain’t a lawyer!” Sandor raged and, where Sansa grappled with rising fear and panic, Sandor did the same but his manifested in restless agitation and anger.

“No, but he’s here on both of your behalf,” Ambrose quickly corrected as if taking up defense of Clyde. Sandor slumped hard in his seat and gripped Sansa’s hand even harder when Ambrose stared across the table at her.

“I owe you an apology,” he began.

“An apology,” she repeated, the inflection matching her sudden confusion. Surely, all of this wasn’t just because he wanted to apologize to her.

Ambrose nodded and paused a moment before speaking again.

“I was assigned to Devil Creek as an undercover agent. I was there mostly just following the trail of bodies that’d been turning up. The murders started in Nebraska well over a year ago. Most people don’t know that. They just assumed it was all unrelated. In Omaha, I was assigned to a case of two missing girls, one of whom eventually turned up dead.

“More missing girls and murders popped up in Kansas, Missouri, down into Oklahoma, and now Texas. Patterns emerged. When it became clear this was a serial killer, the FBI established a task force. That’s how I ended up in your town. The Devil Creek sheriff knew why I was there and gave me top cover where he could, but I guess I should’ve expected small town chatter when a stranger drifts in. Point is—I never meant to scare you. I was just keeping an eye on you.”

Stunned, Sansa let the information sink in and aligned it with this man she’d apparently and grievously misjudged.

“Why me?” she asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

Something in Ambrose shifted, or perhaps fled altogether. The matter-of-fact provision of details, held at arm’s length because he probably had to keep it there, waned. The horror he’d trudged through surrounded him, closing in and his hand shook when he reached for the tape recorder.

“It’s a little complicated,” he replied, and his voice too had weakened. He cleared his throat and seemed anxious to regain his composure. “I need to record this conversation. Just for record-keeping, nothing else.”

Sandor stirred in his seat, but before he could question the man, Ambrose jabbed the red record button. He steadied his eyes at the wall behind Sansa and Sandor.

“Tuesday, September 13th, 1977. Del Rio, Texas. Special Agent Errol Ambrose. FBI Field Office, Omaha, Nebraska.” Ambrose turned to Clyde and motioned his head to the tape recorder.

Clyde leaned forward. “Sheriff Clyde Griffin. Cactus, Texas Police Department.”

Ambrose’s gaze shifted between Sansa and Sandor. “Please state your names.”

Sansa nestled against Sandor’s side, and he wrapped his arm around her once more. Neither spoke. They stared at Ambrose whose lips creased in a terse smile.

“Sandor Clegane and Sansa Stark,” Ambrose spoke on their behalf. 

“It’s Clegane now,” Sansa quickly corrected, and fondness drew her eyes to her husband. She smiled at him and, when she stated her name, it was to him, not some silly tape recorder. “Sansa Clegane.”

Clyde exhaled a soft breath of laughter, and Ambrose followed suit before saying her name.

“Sansa Clegane,” he repeated for his records and flipped open his blue folder.

Inside, neat stacks of paper were clipped together, and Ambrose thumbed through the contents before pulling out a series of photographs stapled to a sheet of cardstock. With the tips of his fingers, he slid the page across the table to Sansa.

“Do any of these women look familiar to you?” he asked.

Sansa cast a worried glance at Sandor. He kissed her forehead and gave a small nod but supervised from his spot as Sansa leaned forward. She examined the photographs that held a sinister pattern—all young women, beautiful and vibrant and with the pulsing promise savagely cut short because Sansa knew why Agent Ambrose had these photographs.

More than a few faces were familiar to her. They were women she’d seen at parties in Kansas City; their smiles as dazzling as the sequined gowns they wore or the jewels that sparkled from their wrists and necks. At least two Sansa had hosted at a dinner party. They’d sat at her table, drank her wine, and she’d shared polite conversation with them. A few were girls from Devil Creek that Sansa had known in some capacity all her life.

A wave of grief bombarded her as the brutality came into full focus. All these women were someone’s daughter, sister, lover, and friend. They had futures. They had families. And now they were gone, snuffed out in a blink of an eye.

“Some,” Sansa replied, and her throat was dry, so the words came hoarse and faded. “I’d seen a few of these women around Kansas City. Mostly at parties. Of course, the girls from Devil Creek I know.”

“All these women are missing or dead. Some of their bodies have been recovered. The others we still can’t locate, but they’re presumed dead.”

Ambrose didn’t have to say it. Sansa already pieced together the tragedy, but somehow hearing it spoken out loud ripped through her and the tears she shed weren’t for her own uncertain future but for these women who had no future at all.

She heard without really listening and sunk against the table with the tremendous and strange burden of guilt that crystalized even further when her eyes landed on a girl she’d remembered from Kansas City—a petite girl with butter blonde hair and the greenest eyes she’d ever seen that gleamed like emerald stars as she hung on Joffrey’s arm last Fourth of July.

Sansa sat up straight and lifted the cardstock from the table to study the girl’s face up close. Even in her destitute heartache, Sansa had never felt jealousy for the woman; only concern that she’d left the girl in the clutches of a monster and should’ve done more to warn her.

“Her,” Sansa exhaled and, when her hand trembled, she set the cardstock to the table and pointed towards the girl’s smiling picture. “I know her,” she continued, and her voice quivered. Only now did Sansa register Sandor’s hand smoothing up and down her back. “Well, not _know_ , but I’d seen her a few times in Kansas City.”

When she raised her eyes to Ambrose, his skin had paled, and he cast only a quick glance at the photograph Sansa pointed to. Clyde reached over and, once more mirroring Sandor, gripped Ambrose’s shoulder and gave a small nod to acknowledge something Sansa couldn’t quite understand.

“That’s my daughter.” Ambrose’s voice cracked. When tears clouded his eyes, he averted his gaze to the featureless wall that offered no reprieve from the grief that battered him.

Sansa understood now. She saw in him what had always been there. A man whose entire world had crumbled, and he’d put it back together the best he could, but entire pieces were missing; great big holes that meant the whole thing would just keep plummeting to the ground, and he’d be left to rebuild, year after year. It would never end because that was what it meant to lose a child. Her mother had told her so after Robb died.

“Your daughter?” Sansa whispered, and she cried along with the man she hardly knew but felt indebted to him now. She’d owed him kindness and paid him suspicion instead. Fear had made her forget herself.

Errol cleared his throat, sat up tall, and readjusted the folder so it was perpendicular to the table’s edge once more. He gathered up the photographs and something of his composure too.

“Ellie was last seen on Fourth of July last year,” he informed, his dark lashes still wet with tears. Sansa stared at her hands in her lap and listened as he continued. Sandor’s hand manifested in her field of vision and he interlaced his fingers with hers. “She was down at the waterfront waiting for the fireworks to start. She called the day before; said she’d fallen in love with a handsome man from a good family. I never wanted her to move to Kansas City, but what father wants his daughter that far from home? That was the last time I ever talked to her, heard her voice.”

Sansa’s eyes snapped to Errol. “Joffrey.”

Errol responded with a solemn nod, but barely contained rage quickly replaced his grief. He kept it in check behind a clenched jaw and his fingers curled into fists, but it seemed to want release.

“The FBI tried to question him about her disappearance, but his family intervened and involved their lawyers. The Kansas City police refused to cooperate. You know what they said to me? No body, no crime. With no evidence and anything to suggest a crime had been committed, they wouldn’t investigate. Dead end after dead end. You can’t imagine the frustration.”

As if plunged into frigid waters, Sansa’s skin rippled with goosebumps. She gripped Sandor’s hand and licked her bottom lip. All her senses—just a moment ago softened with compassion and heartache—hardened with this hideous revelation, on high alert though she felt herself reeling.

Sandor sat up in his seat and leaned towards the table. Sansa swallowed hard and absorbed the horrid truth. This meant she was one of the last people to see Errol’s daughter alive, but not the very last. Sansa knew who held that distinction. She shifted her stunned gaze to Sandor, who looked back at her just as bewildered.

“He had something to do with all these women, didn’t he?”

Though she heard herself speak, Sansa felt as though she was floating outside of herself in a mystified daze.

Errol stiffened in his seat and his fingers curled around the barrel of his ballpoint pen so hard his knuckles flushed white, but his words came even when he spoke again.

“Joffrey lived a double life. By day, he was heir to one of the wealthiest oil families in this country. By night, he preyed on young women. Sometimes he traveled to surrounding states to select his victims, probably to obscure that these murders were connected. In Kansas City, he targeted girls from small towns; girls out of their element, far from home, and all alone. He had a place on the outskirts of the city, a property under an alias, but the money traced back to a front company that the Lannisters set up to obfuscate their illegal activities. He lured some of these women to that property to torture and murder.”

“The apartment,” Sansa whispered.

She knew he had another place when a piece of mail had been accidentally forwarded to the home she shared with him. Sansa had been too heartsick over it to find it on a map. When she confronted him about it, his malevolent rage had known no bounds and she made the grievous mistake of assuming it was the reaction of a man caught red-handed in infidelity.

Errol exchanged a vexed glance with Clyde. “No, it wasn’t an apartment,” he said and shook his head. “It was a house. Very secluded and on a large parcel of land.”

“Is there another property?” Clyde pressed and scooted forward in his seat. 

“I-I don’t know,” Sansa stammered and scanned her memories for anything significant. It all seemed so different in hindsight and filtered through this abhorrent and ghastly knowledge. She chewed her bottom lip and shook her head. Her eyes darted across the metal table with its dull sheen. “I just know that he had another place. I saw the address once on a letter that came in the mail. I confronted him about it. By that point, I saw him so scarcely that I assumed he was living with another woman there. I assumed it was an apartment. I didn’t look into it.”

Sansa’s elbows collided to the table in an unceremonious clamor, and she buried her forehead in her hands. Sandor snaked his arm across the small of her back and she felt his nose press against the side of her cheek and his breath rustle through her hair.

“Those calls you were getting,” Errol began after a beat of silence, perhaps meant to let Sansa catch her breath. “We traced them to a Clarence Whittaker in Devil Creek.”

Sansa’s brows drew together, and she lifted her head from her hands. “Clarence from the hardware store?”

Errol nodded.

“A few people tipped the sheriff off that he seemed to have come into some money—a new truck, new clothes, that sort of thing. When we ran it down, we learned that Joffrey had paid him to be his eyes and ears in Devil Creek, to keep tabs on you and, when needed, enlisted Clarence to place those phone calls. Clarence had a thing for Mormont’s daughter, but she rejected him. Joffrey probably seized the opportunity to knock us off the scent and distract our investigation, so he murdered the Mormont girl, hoping to implicate Clarence who on paper had motive and access to the victim.”

“But what about the other girls in Texas?” Sandor asked and Sansa soaked in the hum of his deep voice against her side and the way his words buzzed through her.

A frown proceeded Errol’s explanation, but he looked at Sansa when he spoke.

“Sansa, I’m going to be frank with you and I think you might know where I’m going with this. Joffrey was planning your murder. You were his ultimate victim; the one he was waiting for. He wanted you to let your guard down. He kept his distance, probably hoping he wouldn’t be implicated when you turned up dead, but something stumped him and threw him off his plan. It was enough that he abandoned his MO. He got angry, and he got sloppy. He’d made multiple trips outside of Kansas City, mostly to Texas where he started targeting women.”

“What changed?” Sansa asked, but Errol and Clyde both looked at Sandor now.

“He didn’t see you coming,” Errol replied. “We think he knew you two were corresponding, but he didn’t view you as a threat, Sandor, and didn’t expect you to show up in Devil Creek. It infuriated him, I’m sure. He was meticulous until that point. He felt in control. He chose a victim and exacted his cruelty. He decided when they disappeared, when they died, how they died. Sandor came around and suddenly all he’d been working towards was sidelined and you now had a protector, Sansa.”

“Jesus,” Sandor breathed into his palm pressed to his face.

They sat with the cumbersome reality; all that could’ve gone wrong and the catastrophic consequences if it had.

“We panicked when no one had heard from you,” Clyde spoke up. “You two saw Joffrey’s last victim at Bronn’s bar. We were afraid he’d targeted you two.”

Sansa glanced at Sandor with surmounting hesitation to probe into the other part of this. She cleared her throat but spoke on a faltering breath.

“What about that press conference with his family and the Kansas City police?”

Clyde exchanged a knowing look with Errol and both men exhaled throaty laughs as some inside joke passed between them.

“That wasn’t the police,” Errol said. “That was a private investigator who used to work for the Kansas City PD, but they terminated him. He was trotted out as an ‘authority’ to give the appearance of clout. He’s a clown, and that press conference was a circus.”

Errol leaned forward and his rigidity eased, his pen and file folder now cast askew on the table and he didn’t seem to notice or care anymore.

“There’s a saying in the FBI—the left hand doesn’t always know what the right hand is doing. The Bureau was separately investigating the Lannisters for money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, extortion. As that case came together, so too was the investigation into the deaths and disappearances. Eventually, it all coalesced.” 

As Errol peeled back each layer of this tale, he gave a long pause as if paying a courtesy. He did so now, but Sandor filled what would’ve been the silence.

“Why aren’t you going after them then?”

The question stood valid and Sansa too wanted an answer, but she knew how these stories often ended. The Lannister wealth bought them protection and a place above the law where they pulled the strings and others—politicians, law enforcement, lawyers—responded in precisely the way intended.

Errol laughed. Actually, it was more of a guffaw. Clyde joined him in the inexplicable mirth that gathered on the other side of the table and once more passed between the two men. Sansa glanced at Sandor, who stared at the other two with uneasiness and irritation. Now wasn’t the time for her and Sandor to be the butt of some joke.

Clyde peered from beneath his brows at Sandor with a pointed look. “You two haven’t heard the news, I take it.”

“What news?” Sandor snapped.

“They’re done,” Errol answered, and the corner of his two-toned mustache lifted in response to a subtle smirk. “Their empire crumbled like Rome just the other day. Wiped out. The fallout has been tremendous. The FBI raided their offices, homes, and that property Joffrey kept. The bodies of at least four missing girls have been positively identified so far. We’re still digging up bones there as we speak, so I’m sure the body count only stands to increase.

“Joffrey’s mother, uncles, grandfather, and cousin have been taken into custody. The media frenzy alone is enough to solidify that fall from grace, and now it’s come out that they harbored a monster. Earlier today, the media broke the story of Joffrey’s crimes. It’s over.”

Neither Sansa nor Sandor spoke. He gripped her hand, and both waited for the other shoe to drop, a caveat or condition that meant this wouldn’t be resolved in their favor. Errol seemed to sense their incredulity. He stared down at the table as if gathering his thoughts and when he leveled his eyes across the table at them, Sansa saw plainly enough the sincerity there.

“My job is rarely rewarding. Even when justice is served, there was still a victim and loved ones who will never recover. My colleagues investigating the Lannisters waited years to bring them down. Many might’ve quit, thinking it was a long shot and that that family was truly untouchable. For long years, they watched that family lie; watched them get away, at every turn, with their crimes; watched them deceive, silence others, demand loyalty from those too afraid to cross them. They cheated, stole, and manipulated to remain at the top, all while protecting a monster.

“I had faith that good might prevail and so too did my colleagues; that honesty and decency and the will to do what was right and to work hard against those injustices would pay off. And it did.”

Sansa slumped back in her seat. Relief didn’t come as she expected. Errol was right. Justice served meant horror had still been committed. It wasn’t always sweet, she realized now. She swallowed down the urge to be sick and her head throbbed at the temples.

Another crime remained and Sansa looked to Sandor whose mouth twitched at the corner, but his lips otherwise remained sealed and perhaps Sansa should’ve followed suit. She knew herself, though, and true freedom meant not having to look over their shoulders anymore.

She shifted to the edge of her seat but couldn’t meet Errol’s dark eyes, so she spoke to his blue folder still open on the table and to the faces of all those young women.

“His family was looking into Joffrey’s disappearance.”

She said no more for fear it might already have been too much. Probably indiscernible to Errol and Clyde, Sansa heard Sandor inhale a sharp breath. Otherwise, he didn’t let on much and held fast to his nonplussed demeanor. Errol chuckled again and shook his head.

“The DA isn’t interested in that,” he said plainly, but Sansa gathered what reassurance she could in his voice. “There are bigger fish to fry and he won’t prosecute. Charges in Joffrey’s disappearance wouldn’t hold water, and everyone knows it. Simply put—no one’s looking for that shithead because they’re worried about him. If he’s found, he’ll fry in the chair.”

Errol flipped the folder shut and downed the rest of his coffee.

“As the fed builds the case against that family, you will probably have a few more questions to answer on account of living with him,” he told Sansa with the sterile effect of tying up loose ends. “It remains to be seen if you’ll be asked to testify, but you may be contacted again.” 

She nodded and Errol looked to Clyde and gathered his things, starting with his pen he returned to his pocket. Before he could stop the tape recorder, Sandor lifted a hand.

“Wait, so that’s it?” he pressed. “You just wanted to talk?”

He wasn’t asking Errol. He narrowed his eyes at Clyde, the last piece of the puzzle that hadn’t found its place yet.

“You’re not in any kind of trouble, if that’s what you’re asking,” Errol answered when Clyde hadn’t. 

Clyde matched Sandor’s stare with the same unspoken admonition that Sansa’s father used to pay Robb.

“Close to it, though,” Clyde chortled and shook his head.

“What’s your role in all this, old man?” Sandor fired back, far less reverent than Robb had ever been, though, some affection seeped through.

In one sudden movement, Clyde sat up, reached across Errol, and flipped off the tape recorder. For good measure, he retrieved the tape and set it on top of Errol’s blue folder. When he was finished, Clyde leaned across the table and the intensity of his gaze did not waver as he spoke.

“Let’s imagine for shits and giggles that something possessed you to cross that border into Mexico. You would’ve violated your parole, and for what? You heard the man. You’re not in trouble. I paid Father Bill for his services; in this case, the timing of your wedding ceremony. It allowed me to catch you before you might have tried to honeymoon with your lovely bride south of the border. This is all theoretical, of course.”

Sansa’s mouth fell open and, in the edges of her vision, saw Sandor’s Adam’s apple bob in the telltale sign of a hard swallow.

“Got anything you wanna say to me?” Clyde sniped and his chest rose and fell with a heavy exchange of breath.

“Ah shit. I’m sorry, Griff,” Sandor rasped and what his voice lacked in volume it made up for in obvious sincerity. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

“Water under the bridge.” A low chuckle issued from Clyde and he eased back in his seat. “Consider it a lesson in the dangers of being an ornery asshole.”

Out of words and stunned into a befuddled silence just like Sansa, Sandor gave a faint nod and he squeezed Sansa’s hand.

“I’ve already spoken to your parole officer. You didn’t technically violate the terms,” Clyde added, but smiled at Sansa. “Since you two got hitched, we’ll consider this a destination wedding and not an attempt to flee.”

In unison, Sansa and Sandor slowly looked at one another and what passed between them Sansa couldn’t quite put into words but likened it to the feeling of dawn’s break after a stormy night.

“That’s it,” Errol said and stood from the table. “You two are free to enjoy your wedded bliss. I’ll walk you out.”

They all rose, and Sansa held onto Sandor’s hand with an iron grip in case this was all just a dream. Her legs wobbled as she walked, and her hand still trembled in his. Errol led the way down the hall and to the small lobby. He stepped aside and loitered in the corner as Clyde approached her and Sandor.

Clyde took Sansa’s hand in not quite a handshake, but he gave a gentle squeeze and a kind smile.

“It was a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said. “Congratulations and good luck taming this wild jackass.”

His eyes sparkled with delight, and he winked at Sansa before patting Sandor hard on the shoulder.

“The pleasure is mine,” she laughed and beamed up at her husband, who allowed himself a small smirk at the jape. “I’m sure I’ll do just fine,” Sansa added and leaned into Sandor. 

“I have no doubts,” Clyde muttered. He turned to Sandor, who let go of Sansa’s hand momentarily.

Much like Errol, Sansa stepped away in what she sensed would be a private moment between Sandor and Clyde, who still spoke loud enough that she heard.

“Shut your mouth for once and listen to me,” Clyde demanded in fond warning and planted his hands firmly on Sandor’s shoulders. He lowered his voice some and matched Sandor’s eyes. “I came to save you from yourself. Don’t ever accuse me of doing wrong by you again. I never have and I never will.”

The weight of Clyde’s words seemed to sink into Sandor, whose features turned solemn, and he gave a subtle nod. “I won’t,” he murmured and shook Clyde’s hand. “Thank you, Griff. For everything.”

Face contorted in feigned affront, Clyde swatted Sandor’s hand away and pulled him into an embrace. Though he was shorter than Sandor, Clyde raised on the toes of his boots and, with his hand gripping the back of Sandor’s neck, whispered something in his ear. The words he gave weren’t meant for others, only for Sandor who grinned and nodded and, when the hug broke, both he and Clyde gazed fondly at Sansa.

She folded her hands in front of her and shifted timidly on her feet. Sandor approached and took her hand once more as they all departed the building and crossed the gravel lot outside.

The cloud cover had thinned, and, with that dissipation, the honeyed heat kissed Sansa’s skin, sweetened with the smell of wildflowers and warmed earth. A dry breeze shifted through the grass that danced in response. As if the world had changed, the gentle sunlight imbued everything in a gold gossamer haze of late afternoon. Sansa breathed it in and closed her eyes when she and Sandor stopped near the tailgate of his truck.

He must’ve felt it too. When he wrapped his arm around her and Sansa leaned against his side, she felt his body release the tension that’d been there. His touch softened too, a languid sweep of his fingertips down her bare arm until he reached the dip of her waist and settled there.

With his hands planted on his hips, Errol dawdled towards Sansa and Sandor in slow lingering steps with Clyde by his side.

“Agent Ambrose, it’s been a pleasure, my friend. I believe I owe you a beer next time you’re in Cactus.” Clyde gave the man’s hand a firm shake and patted his shoulder.

“I’ll be taking you up on it, Clyde,” Errol agreed with a beaming smile that lit up his features. 

It was obvious that Clyde had developed some kind of working relationship with Errol, though she couldn’t say for how long. Either way, mutual respect and genuine friendship flowed between the two men.

On the way to his truck, Clyde tipped his hat to Sansa.

“You take care, love.” He pointed to Sandor and gave a wink. “Remember what I said. I’ll see you both around.”

With that, Clyde climbed into his two-toned truck, fired up the engine, and waved out the window when he turned onto the road.

When the horizon swallowed up his truck, Errol turned to Sansa and Sandor with his arms folded over his chest. He squinted into the sun’s dull glow and shifted a knowing look between them. They waited for him to say something, and he seemed to toil over words that never quite came. In slow steps, he retreated to his car that looked an awful lot like a hearse parked next to Sandor’s truck. The vehicle seemed fitting for the man who was a kind but bizarre soul.

He unlocked the driver’s side door, opened it, and, for a moment, Sansa thought he might climb in and drive away without another word shared between them. Instead, he stood slotted in the space of his open car door and turned to Sansa and Sandor.

“You never asked if we know where he is,” Errol remarked. At face value, it might’ve sounded like a subtle accusation, but his lips peeled in a wry smile, almost fond.

Sandor cleared his throat. “What?” he breathed with faint irritation seeping in.

Errol propped one elbow on the top of his car door. He tucked his other hand into the pocket of his jeans.

“Joffrey,” he said with his head tilted to the side. “You didn’t ask if he’s still out there or if there are any leads in his apparent disappearance.”

Sandor uncoiled his hold on Sansa and took up a defensive stance with his arms crossed over his chest. He settled back on his heels that sunk further into the gravel.

“I assumed you would’ve told us if there was something significant to report,” Sandor retorted with a shrug.

Errol matched his eyes and gave a slow nod, as if closely evaluating Sandor’s words. 

“Touché,” was all he said before his lips peeled in a wide smile. “I’m happy to have met you both.” His gaze drifted to Sansa and softened some. “Sansa, I apologize again for the fright I gave you.”

With his words of departure, now would’ve been the time for Errol to leave and ride off towards the horizon just like Clyde had. Case closed. The matter done. He didn’t, though. He remained nestled between the side of his car and the open door that revealed a black leather seat cracked down the center. Sansa thought he meant to say something else, but he stared expectantly at Sandor and Sansa as if waiting for one of them to speak first.

They could’ve considered it an impasse but the space between the three of them grew heavy again with something unspoken that they talked around, but none would deal with head on. Sandor relented first and Sansa looked on with erupting unease, but he was her husband now and she trusted him besides.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Sandor started on a low, rasping voice and slowly paced around the corner of the tailgate towards Errol. Sansa followed close behind. “I’m grateful for how this all panned out, but I’m not a man of God so I don’t consider this stroke of tremendous luck to be divine intervention.”

Errol shifted forward but gazed towards the flat expanse of grass and patchy dirt and the road stretching towards arid countryside.

“Intervention isn’t always divine.” His eyes landed on Sandor with deliberate weight behind the look he gave. “No body, no crime.”

Sansa’s gaze snapped to Sandor, and she saw the corner of his mouth twitch with an emergent smile that he snuffed out.

“You took a trip to the woods,” Sandor said with careful precision, deftly selecting his words.

“I did,” Errol conceded with a nod. “One stormy night, Clyde called and said you two might be in some trouble. He tracked me down in Midland where I was staying. I got to Devil Creek as quick as I could. As quick as I could was about the time you two were on your way to a midnight drive in the woods. I figured it was just a tryst on lover’s lane. Besides, it was too dark for me to find out what was so fascinating in those woods, so I waited until the next day to see for myself. I found a hole there.” 

Sansa’s blood ran cold, and she fumbled for Sandor’s hand. His eyes flickered up and down Errol’s form, sizing up the situation they’d found themselves in just as much as the man himself.

“What did you find in it?”

“Nothing important. If anyone else comes across that hole, they’ll find it empty,” Errol added, and Sansa watched a satisfied smile unfold across his lips.

“Empty,” Sandor repeated, and the single word came incredulous. Curiosity apparently piqued, Sandor took another step forward and so too did Sansa.

Errol reached into the front pocket of his shirt and plucked out a cigarette and lighter.

“You ever been to a hog farm?” he asked as he lit the cigarette. Sandor shook his head, and Errol paused briefly to take a long drag. When he continued, smoke billowed from his lips as he gave a sigh. “I got the taste for bacon and pork and, on recommendation from our friend Clyde Griffin, I visited a rancher just outside of Devil Creek; a man he knew who could accommodate my interest. Amazing what those pigs will eat. They’re carnivores and cannibals. Flesh and bone, dead or alive. They’ll eat just about anything and leave nothing behind. When I say nothing, I mean not a damn thing.”

For the second time in the afternoon, Sansa had no words. Not one. Mouth perpetually agape, she tried to gather something, anything, but nothing came. Instead, she slowly shook her head and Sandor did much the same except his response manifested on laughter as he too stared at the ground and shook his head while Errol quietly puffed on his cigarette.

“The bacon was good too,” he commented in a strange afterthought accompanied with a wink. “I recommend it.”

Sandor lifted his head with a look Sansa could only describe as something between unsettled and relieved. His brows lifted, and he shook his head again but surveyed the distant horizon.

“You’re very generous with your recommendations and all,” Sandor finally said in as close to a “thank you” as Errol was likely to get since they still circumnavigated the truth. Some things just didn’t need to be said and could be read loud and clear without gory explanation. This was one of them. 

“It’s the least I can do,” Errol shrugged and ashed his cigarette. Bent over, he ducked into his car and rummaged through the center console. “I like to see nice folk rewarded for doing some good in this world and saving men like me the hassle,” he hollered from his car. When he reemerged, he tucked something into his back pocket. “Funny how karma works. They never found my daughter’s body. I suppose it seems a fair bit of justice no one will ever find his.”

Errol reached for his back pocket and produced Sandor’s silver flask. “I believe this belongs to you.”

Sandor’s eyes widened in bewilderment, and he swallowed hard. His hand faintly trembled as he reached for it. As the flask exchanged their hands, Sandor matched Errol’s eyes and gave a reverent nod.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

He meant for everything, Sansa knew. Everything. All the ways this could have ended tragically, but they’d been spared.

A man like Errol Ambrose operated within the universe’s justice system that punished monsters like Joffrey instead of good men like Sandor. Some might’ve called him corrupt. They might’ve accused him of existing in shades of gray that didn’t belong in the black and white world of law and order. Sansa knew now that Errol had spared her and Sandor a life separated and torn apart from one another.

With his cigarette resting in the corner of his mouth, Errol climbed into his car and rolled down the window. He swiveled in his seat and grinned at Sansa.

“Sansa, you remind me a lot of my daughter. She was a kind soul and loved to sing. _Season of the Witch_ was her favorite song. Someday I’d like to come back to Devil Creek and listen to you sing. Maybe by then you will have learned that song?”

Sansa flashed a bright smile and gave an eager nod. “Of course! It’s the least I can do.”

Errol chuckled and fired up the engine. He pulled his car door shut but poked his head out the open window. “You folk stay safe out there. Strange times we’re living in. I’ll see to it that no one bothers you about this bit, if you know what I mean.” 

With his cigarette dangling out the window, Errol cranked up his radio and backed out of the parking spot with _Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)_ pouring from the speakers. Against the backdrop of the unusual tune, his car eased towards the road and he flashed a peace sign out the window.

“What a strange man,” Sandor remarked while watching Errol’s equally strange car ramble down the road with music pouring from it. 

Settled by his side, Sansa slipped her hand in his and gazed up at him. “Not all saviors come in delightful packages.”

Sandor cracked a soft smile, and his eyes swept towards her. “You did.”

On the drive back north, Sansa thought about that statement—such sweetness wrapped up in passing commentary and sealed with a kiss to her forehead. They raced to put as much distance between them and Del Rio as they could. Where they’d fled here in search of higher ground, it’d suddenly sunk beneath their feet and the path home seemed clearer than ever.

The exuberance came in waves, cyclical as she and Sandor each grappled with all they’d been told. Laughter and smiles punctuated thoughtful reticence. It was like a rolling tide; gentle though it was, the ebb and flow became relentless and all Sansa wanted was the stability of solid ground to stand on, so she took Sandor’s hand.

They’d been on the road for hours when that sinking nadir came again. She’d lived with a monster, well and true, and guilt would be a burden she’d carry into the future; guilt at not having done enough, not probing enough, not following up on odd feelings and nagging intuition that might’ve saved lives of innocent women, perhaps even Errol’s daughter.

Perceptive as ever, Sandor gazed at Sansa. His palm smoothed up her thigh. By now, he was cast in a golden halo with serenity illuminating him just as much as the sun now spent and fading out his window. She’d always meant to ask him how he knew, how he traced her thoughts sometimes before she spoke, how he peered into her in ways that never felt voyeuristic but rather like finally being seen.

“Come here,” he whispered, and his gaze landed on her before shifting out the windshield to the open road.

Sansa slid across the bench seat to his side. With one hand on the wheel, Sandor’s other arm coiled around her shoulders. She closed her eyes and felt him draw a deep breath before releasing it as a quiet sigh. When he spoke, it was soft but deep in timbre, a soothing rumble.

“Sometimes it’s just about surviving. People talk about bravery in the face of danger. I saw it all the time in Vietnam. Men would ship out with the best of intentions, wanting to be a hero because, if they were gonna die anyway, it might as well be for something. Danger would come and those men fought for their own lives. It’s instinct. We all do it. The point is—you did exactly what you needed to do. You got out. You survived. That’s bravery, Sansa.”

She shifted slightly, enough to gaze up at him—masculine features beneath the meager shadow of his hat; strong against her side; a dream against which she’d compare all others before. He cracked a smile and kissed her forehead, and she closed her eyes with his warmth seeping into her, the calm rise and fall of each breath he took, and the dull sound of the engine humming.

It was enough to lull her into sleep, brought on by the comedown of worry and unease they’d been living in. After riding the emotional high and being suspended in bewilderment, she’d settled at the bottom, exhausted from it all. She woke again when the truck shifted and slowed to a stop. Bleary-eyed, she sat up and couldn’t imagine she’d slept through the rest of the journey. Indeed, she hadn’t.

The sun dipped just below the horizon and bled out in once-brilliant colors swallowed up by a rich sky. Sandor had pulled over on the side of a dusty road with nothing but cracked earth surrounding them. When he killed the engine, crickets sang in the dusky light outside the truck.

He said nothing, only gripped the wheel and contemplated the desolate scene outside, though the featureless expanse offered little to warrant such intrigue. It wasn’t that, Sansa knew. Sandor’s chest rose and fell with quick, shallow breaths and, even in the twilight imbued with such serenity, she saw his skin had paled.

With a tentative touch, Sansa reached over and placed her hand on his thigh. Just as she went to speak, he turned to her as if some spell on him had been broken. He scooped her up in his arms, one hand cradling the back of her head where his fingers sunk in her hair and the other wrapped securely around her lower back.

He held her like she might disappear, and his ragged breaths rustled through her hair. Sansa embraced him with just as much fervent insistence, anything to comfort what had come over him. In his own way, the totality had finally settled for him too. And where it had sent Sansa off into sleep, it seemed Sandor responded with worried disbelief that it might all be a dream, a ruse, a way to pull the rug out from underneath him and leave him in blindsided ruin and disappointment on the floor.

“I need some air,” he muttered, but didn’t let her go, not until Sansa nodded. “You’ll come with me?”

“Of course,” she whispered and kissed his scarred cheek. “Where you go, I go.”

When he climbed from the truck, he did so with unusual clumsiness and flung the door shut behind him. Sansa followed suit and met him at the back of the truck, where he let down the tailgate and sat. She settled next to his side. Sandor removed his hat and, with his elbows resting on his knees, cradled his face in his hands.

A dusting of stars dazzled above them. The night rose still and quiet. Sansa smoothed her hand over his back that rose to meet her palm with each erratic and tattered breath he took. She drew her knees together and onto the tailgate as she turned to him.

“I’m here. Look at me.” Sansa tenderly urged him to sit up and meet her eyes. When he did, his gaze had softened in a way—cracks in a perpetually hard foundation—though the fear still came through. She cupped his cheeks and her thumbs swept against his strong cheekbones. “It’s just us. Remember? The world is ours now—our future, our life together. It’s ours, darling. No one can take that from us.”

He rested his forehead against hers and nodded. The breeze lifted his hair. With it came the peppery scent of his aftershave.

“I’m lucky.” Sandor breathed it like a bad omen, as if what small blessings he had might taunt the universe or invite misfortune.

She rubbed her nose against his and whispered, “You’re loved. And you’re free.” She felt him sigh before she placed a sweet kiss against his lips. “We’re free,” she affirmed and felt him nod against her again; this time with more conviction, and he strengthened beneath her touch.

He pulled away enough to look at her. His eyes traced her face with a lightness, and he lifted a hand to her cheek.

“You and I, we’re free.” Sansa said it again, as much as she needed to for him to understand and believe.

“Free,” he repeated as if it were a foreign word. His lips lifted in a smile at the sound of it, the taste of it coming off of his tongue, and the unbridled release it imparted in him now.

“Free,” he said again, just a whisper, a single parting word for the invisible binds he shed, the ones he’d carried with him far longer than she could ever know. Sansa watched in real-time as he was unburdened from them. “Free.”

Even in the pale moonlight, Sansa saw the change wash over him as if he’d drank down some sweet elixir that redefined the world for him. By her side, he took her hand and his smile transformed into laughter brought on by quiet, unbridled happiness.

Sandor draped his arm across her shoulders, drew her near once more, and gathered her hand in his lap. He traced the ring on her finger. They reclaimed the night and rewrote the story it’d tell—not one of fear or paranoid disbelief, but freedom to roam, to live, to love.

Sansa gazed up at Sandor eying the twilight sky and awash in tranquility at last.

“Where will we go now?” she asked and gripped his hand. Sandor’s skin was rough but warm to the touch.

“Home,” he replied with a tender smile. “We’ll go home.”

She didn’t ask which home, his or hers. In the way he said it, Sansa surmised that home wasn’t so much a place as a state of mind and one they’d found in one another—a shelter for all the seasons of their life, the storms they might endure, a home built with love and devotion.

Beneath the stars, they held onto one another. They were happy. They were loved. They were free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been waiting so long to get to this chapter! Months and months and months of keeping my mouth shut and trying not to reveal too much in comment replies. It feels good to finally have it all out there! All the secrets revealed! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and for hanging with me to this point! I’d love to hear your thoughts (I always do!) on this chapter. 
> 
> Happy early birthday to ShadesOfPemberely! I’m blessed to know you and call you a friend and this fic wouldn’t exist without you! 
> 
> See you next week for the very last chapter of Tuesday's Gone! I'll be sad to see this fic end, but I'm grateful to you all and have enjoyed sharing it with you so very much!


	23. Landslide

**October 1979—Austin, Texas**

Recognition of luck knocked Sandor off kilter with regularity whose pattern he hadn’t quite been able to trace. Sometimes he’d be changing the oil on his truck or fetching something from the store for Sansa and find himself blindsided with what felt like an out-of-body experience.

Like a stranger looking in, he’d see himself in the parking lot of the grocery store, staring at his wife’s swirling handwriting on a piece of scrap paper and falling in love with the way she dotted her “I’s” in the word “zucchini” or the wild descriptions she used when she couldn’t remember the name of something.

_“That fish we had the night the power went out, and you banged your knee and I kissed it (and other things) better.”_

He always knew what she meant. In so many ways, they had a language all their own—secrets between the two of them; a way of speaking without really saying a word, perhaps just a look or a certain smile.

It all seemed like a fever dream rooted in genuine hope but manifested in impossible ways that only a fugue state could conjure. He’d been living it for over two years and reckoned if it weren’t real, he would’ve woken up by now.

Today, that moment came as a crisp breeze swept through the open windows of their house and danced on the gossamer-like drapes Sansa had picked out when they first moved in. They’d mutually decided that Cactus and Devil Creek held one-too-many bitter memories and, in a symbolic gesture of leaving it all behind, they sold their homes and the ghosts of their respective pasts that’d been residing there.

Sandor thought it might make him sad or that he’d committed some sacrilege to his bloodline by off-loading perhaps the last and most enduring physical memory he had of his family. He hadn’t expected the relief and, even less, the release. The only heirloom he’d been hanging onto was one of grief, and that wasn’t the kind he was interested in honoring through legacy. Sansa said less about her own parallel experience of finally emptying her parents’ house and purging the painful past. She’d kept her Miss Texas ribbon but pitched the rest. As she told it, she wanted something to remind herself that unrealized dreams were often blessings in disguise.

Her siblings had come to the collective decision that Sansa should keep most of the money that’d come out of the house. She’d refused at first, but ultimately settled on a compromise. She and Sandor pooled their equity into the quaint home they shared—an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town with more character than any place Sandor had ever lived, and they’d had a fine time fixing it up to their liking. It sat on just enough land for Sansa to garden, and the trees had grown tall and strong through time. The lush canopies shaded the backyard that they’d turned into their own little paradise.

Life was sweet on levels Sandor hadn’t known existed, and he sat now in the upstairs room that Sansa had set aside for dreaming. She sang in here, wrote songs, together they’d listen to their records or reminisce on the brighter spots of their past, but more often dreamed up their future together while lounged on the velvet sofa in one another’s arms.

At the writing desk, Sandor stared out the window, admiring the gray autumn afternoon and drinking in the cool breeze. On a deep breath, he relished the savory scents wafting from the kitchen downstairs and dinner roasting in the oven. The cinnamon-sugar scent of cookies or some other dessert mingled amongst the garlic and herbs and a fine cut of meat from the butcher.

Pots, pans, and utensils rattled gently as Sansa milled about the kitchen. She hummed a tune she’d wrote, one of many. In fact, she had an entire album of love songs she claimed he’d inspired and dubbed Sandor her muse, which he found both amusing and achingly endearing in equal measure. One by one, those songs were sold to artists in Austin, Dallas, Nashville, and even LA. When she stopped looking, her dream had found her. She also attributed that to him, her talisman of good fortune.

The totality of it all rendered Sandor near-catatonic, all but the smile that slowly spread across his lips. The tremendous, earth-shattering realization of luck struck him down again. As his eyes swept across the room lit by the warm glow of a Tiffany lamp, he felt like he was seeing it for the first time or as if someone had just enlightened him to the fact that this was indeed his home and he wasn’t an interloper in some other man’s simple but wholly satisfying life.

_I’m lucky._

He still didn’t believe in God, but all the disbelief and the sense that some greater power had pulled the strings in his favor sent Sandor’s eyes to the sky in these moments of paralyzing gratitude. That sky could very well be empty, but he at least believed he owed something to someone for how things turned out.

It’d taken some time for the dust to settle. Sandor had slowly shed the fear that the rug was perpetually just a moment away from being pulled out from underneath him. For Sansa, it took a long while before she stopped looking over her shoulder with stray worries. Justice had called on them both and, once it was truly served, they’d turned a corner on the residual haunts of their pasts.

Sansa testified in the case against the family whose corruption apparently knew no bounds; only treachery, debauchery, and secrets that the law finally cast its light upon. Over time, she’d told Sandor all she endured during her time in Kansas City, but watching her up on the witness stand, tearfully recounting the atrocities, he knew the full spectrum of her grief.

In telling it so plainly to a judge and jury, Sansa likened it to spring cleaning. She’d overturned everything inside of herself and swept away all the unsavory bits that’d gathered in undisturbed nooks and crannies. Her slate had been wiped clean; the trial done, justice served, and true healing began.

Sandor’s own healing took a different path. He found an ear to bend in another veteran, a man who’d seen similar horror during the war and who had gotten some sort of therapist certification to help others through it. In a similar way to Sansa, Sandor unearthed all he’d buried deep within, looked it in the eye, and sent it away. It was a long process and arduous at times, but he committed to it with Sansa’s loving patience and understanding on his side. With his soul finally at peace, Sandor’s nightmares ended not long after.

He too had had his day in court and climbed his ass up on a witness stand and, whereas Sansa’s own experience had been understandably difficult yet cathartic, Sandor’s was full of pleasure and sweet revenge. Next to his lawyer, Boros the Bloated couldn’t look at Sandor as he told the truth of his time in prison under Boros’s watch.

That truth was ugly and apparently worthy of tears from some jury members. Boros looked at Sandor only after the guilty verdict came down. With Sansa on his arm, looking as beautiful as ever and staring daggers at Boros, Sandor lifted his middle finger to tip his hat to the man and indulged in daydreams about how Boros would fare behind bars.

His reunion with the warden—who insisted Sandor call him by his name, Glen—was icing on the cake. As the court was dismissed, Sandor formally introduced Sansa to the man who’d retired and taken a wife—a woman named Rita who worked at the prison and instantly recognized Sansa. The four of them even went to lunch and promised to stay in touch, which they’d accomplished with dinners and picnics here and there. Glen and Rita even attended Sansa and Sandor’s official wedding this past spring.

As much as they both held their first ceremony sacred, the second wedding allowed them to gather family and friends. That included Errol Ambrose who’d stayed in touch with them and routinely visited Cactus and his new best friend, Clyde. The two had become inseparable.

Sansa’s siblings remarked that the wedding was the first time they’d all been together in years and, while her parents’ presence was sorely missed, Griff was the one who gave Sansa away and later wowed the guests with his famed dancing. Griff didn’t boast about it much, but the man could cut-up on the dance floor like no one Sandor had ever seen. Just when Sandor thought the old man was sweetening with age, he’d whispered in Sandor’s ear the same grave warning and affectionate affirmation he’d issued in Del Rio at the police station.

_“Treat her right or I’ll come sort you out myself. And remember, I love you like a son.”_

Sandor didn’t have to be told. He already knew both. The wedding had marked a joyous celebration, not just of them as a couple, but of how far they’d come together. They’d walked through hell and back, hand-in-hand and side-by-side, and if ever there was something that could forge an unbreakable bond between two people, it’d be that hellfire of adversity and the way they came out the other side again, stronger than ever and more devoted to one another. And now their life together was simple, but richer because of it, and they’d fought to get to this place. Their wedding had been made sweeter by the presence of Glen, Clyde, Bronn, and Errol—people who’d been in Sandor and Sansa’s corner, who’d looked after them during their darkest hours, and championed them until the end.

With that thought in mind, Sandor plucked a pen from the desk drawer and drew a deep inhale as he stared at the single piece of stationery with its border of roses. Those same roses had adorned the letters Sansa wrote to him in prison, perhaps the bleakest era of his life. The sheet in front of him was the last piece of his mother-in-law’s stationery.

Sandor had refused at first when Sansa handed it over to him with a fond smile, adoring as ever in the way she looked at him. Her reasoning was sound—the stationery was sacred in the way it symbolized the forces that’d brought them together, and so it seemed fitting that the last sheet of it be used for this purpose. It’d all come full circle, she said, and Sandor agreed. He could think of no better way to consume the last sheet of it, but that meant he had to make his words count. He’d bleed it all on the page, even if it didn’t come out pretty or perfect. In the very least, it’d be sincere.

With that in mind, Sandor let the pen traipse over the single page and captured what he hoped would be the crux of his thoughts.

_Griff,_

_I could’ve picked up the phone to say what I’m about to, but somehow it seems my words are more meaningful like this. Go figure._

_It’s hard to believe the last time I saw you was at my do-over wedding. You ever think you’d see the day I married a woman like Sansa? I know I didn’t, but I count my blessings every chance I get._

_She wasn’t showing yet at our ceremony but, as you know, the baby is due in just a few months. I suppose I better get a handle on fatherhood. Truth be told—I’m scared shitless. Sansa will take to motherhood like a fish to water, I have no doubts._

_Our bar is still doing well. Real well. Sansa draws quite the crowd with her singing (or did…I’ve had to put my foot down on account of her being so far along). Just last week some big shot producer in Dallas even bought the rights to another song she wrote. You might hear it on the radio soon. I couldn’t be prouder, and I love that girl like crazy. As for me, after all that talk of working to live, I find a great deal of my own pride in owning the business and watching it grow._

_Sansa’s sister moved to town with her boyfriend a couple weeks ago. I tell you what—she is an ornery little thing (you’ll see when you meet her) and a pain in my ass, but we’re in a dead heat for who loves Sansa the most, so I give her that. Her boyfriend, Gendry, is a good man, and we hit it off. I even hired him at the bar. I guess you could say it’s become a family business._

_Mostly, I’m writing to thank you. To think, I joked about using Sansa’s first letter to me as toilet paper. What a fucking fool I was! Can you imagine if I’d done that and never wrote her back? Second only to fatherhood on the list of shit that terrifies me—the idea that I could’ve so easily and through my own stupidity let her slip away._

_I guess all of that is to say I never believed or truly imagined that I’d have the life I do now—a wife who I love more every day though I go to sleep each night swearing to the stars I couldn’t love her anymore than I already do; a child on the way who I have no doubts I’ll feel the same way about; a home that we’ve made our own; a business that’s thriving. I better stop boasting now or something’s bound to strike me down._

_We’re counting down the days until you move to Austin. It’ll be good to have more family here. Once the baby comes along, we’ll need Grandpa Griff nearby. I hope you’re keeping an eye on Cactus in the meantime._

_We think of you often, Clyde, and your name isn’t far from our lips, minds, or hearts in this household. Thank you for always being in my corner, even when no one else was. You told me once you loved me like a son and I love you in the same way I did my father. You can’t know—and I don’t think I have enough words—to tell you what you mean to me, so I’ll end it here._

_S.C._

Sandor gently set the pen down to the desk and contemplated his handwriting in neat rows of carefully penned letters. When the ink dried, he folded the letter into thirds and stuffed it into the last matching envelope and sealed it. He stood from the desk with the letter in hand and traversed the room. He stopped at the door and gripped the knob as his eyes swept over the space with all its whimsical details—a faded oriental rug; bits of mismatched art hanging on the walls; jewel-toned lamps; instruments propped in one corner and their record player in the other.

Sansa’s laughter poured from downstairs, probably something she heard on the radio. Like a siren song, Sandor followed the sound with his letter in hand. This was the typical progression of being struck with luck. It usually sent him straight into her arms. He quickly took the stairs, hurried down the hall, and into the kitchen that was warm, fragrant, and filled with gentle light.

Sandor tossed the letter to the table and eased up behind Sansa at the sink. His hands protectively cradled her belly carrying their child, and he buried his face against the side of her neck. He breathed her in—the sweet scent of her perfume—and soaked in the warmth she put off that seeped into his chest. Her hands still damp from the dish water covered over his and she craned her neck to look at him.

“Did you write your letter, sweetheart?” she muttered and kissed his jaw, all she could reach in her bare feet too swollen for shoes.

She turned around and gazed up at him with her cheeks a pretty shade of pink and auburn hair framing her gorgeous face.

“I did,” he said and lifted Sansa’s arms to circle his neck.

When he dipped his head to capture her lips in a soft kiss, she sighed against him and her fingers sunk in his hair. The kissed ended with tranquil smiles from both of them, and Sandor extracted himself from her arms and meandered over to the table where Sansa had set out a charcuterie plate with vegetables. Sandor plucked a carrot from the plate and popped it into his mouth.

He lifted one brow at Sansa and pointed to the envelope. “You wanna know what it says?”

“Oh darling, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she beamed bright, veritably glowing and a sight to behold now more than ever. Her oversized sweater fell off her shoulder. 

“Of course, I want to!” Sandor protested on a rumbling laugh and reached for Sansa.

She waddled across the kitchen with her hands cradling her lower back. He told her once she was his best friend. It was as true now as it ever was. He never knew such a thing could exist—best friend, wife, confidant, love of his life all wrapped up into one beautiful package he couldn’t keep his hands off of.

He sat at the edge of the table and Sansa settled in front of him, smiling fondly with her hands on his shoulders. “I tell you everything,” he murmured. 

She tossed her hair behind her shoulders and tilted her head. “Well, then what did it say?”

Sandor caressed his hands up and down her back, a touch Sansa relished with a languid sigh. “I talked an awful lot about how lucky I am and how much I love you.”

Easily moved to tears these days, Sansa’s eyes glistened, and Sandor would’ve said more but figured he’d stop now. He had an entire lifetime ahead of him to tell her all the ways she’d given him more than he ever thought possible and everything it meant, _she_ meant, to him.

“I love you, too,” she responded shakily and, with her arms tucked to her chest, settled against him to be held. He kissed the top of her head that rested against his shoulder and wrapped his arms around her.

“I also said your sister is a pain in my ass.” 

A giggle burst from Sansa and she stood upright again, the tears in her eyes now those from laughter.

“She’s your sister now too,” Sansa tenderly chided and pressed her lips to the crooked bridge of his nose she seemed to love.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Sandor grumbled and reached behind him for an olive. He stood and turned towards the table with Sansa by his side.

Careful not to smudge the edges, Sansa plucked a Polaroid from the table and handed it off to him. 

“Our family,” she whispered and gazed up at him with so much blissful pride. Sandor draped his arm across her shoulders and drew her against him as he took the photo from her.

Taken just the other day, he and Sansa stood on the front porch of their house, the steps of which were dotted with bursts of color from potted chrysanthemums and marigolds and a dusting of autumn leaves. Their neighbor had taken it for them and what was meant to be a posed picture ended up candid; with one arm wrapped around her and the other cradling her belly, Sandor smiled down at Sansa, who returned the smile as she gazed up at him. They hadn’t bothered to take another. This one captured it all.

Sansa reached for the photo album they would send in a care package to Griff as he tied up loose ends in Cactus. He’d be here just in time for Christmas—tree decorating, family dinner, the whole deal. And perhaps there’d be another member of the family here by then, too. _Perhaps._ Sandor smoothed his hands over Sansa’s belly again.

She flipped open the album to the last page and, in a ceremony of sorts, motioned for Sandor to secure the Polaroid inside. As careful as his large hands would allow, Sandor tucked the picture in the photo corners pasted into the album. One picture wasn’t enough to immortalize their life together. A whole photo album was lovingly put together with Polaroids pasted in—pictures of Sandor behind the bar of their tavern, Sansa singing up on stage, trips they’d taken, the garden they grew, the life they’d built with one another.

Luck-struck again, Sandor closed the photo album and stared down at Sansa as if seeing her for the first time. If one picture wasn’t enough, then certainly forever with her wouldn’t be enough either, but he’d take the time he had and cherish it.

“Thank you,” he muttered. Something about her being pregnant got him emotional too sometimes. His eyes stung, and he blinked away the sensation.

“For what?” Sansa asked so sweetly and smoothed her fingertips across his scarred cheek. Her brows knit together as she gazed up at him.

He motioned to the photo album, everything their life had been thus far. “For this. For loving me. You’ve given me the world.”

She cried now, a large swell of teardrops that spilled over her cheeks, and she held onto him so soundly. All this time, she’d never stopped looking at him the way she was now, and Sandor didn’t think she ever would.

“I am honored to be the one who gets to love you. And you are so very loved. _You’ve_ given _me_ the world. Everything I ever wanted.”

“We’re even then,” he laughed and cradled her tear-soaked cheeks.

“Dinner will be ready in another hour or so,” she said, and her eyes flicked to the oven, but she took his hand and tugged him towards the hall, her face illuminated with a wistful smile. “Let’s go dream.”

He let her lead the way up the stairs to their dreaming room, the place where they conjured their future, mused over the shape it might take, and where the journey might lead them. For the first time in his life, Sandor put faith in the promise of tomorrow and the blessings it brought—home, family, and freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big shout out to Bingleroo, the OG Warden (Glen)/Rita shipper! She knew there was something there 😉
> 
> Thank you for all the love and kindness you’ve shown this fic! It was so much fun to write and I genuinely enjoyed connecting with you all. I really appreciate the support and will miss this Tuesday ritual. It’s been an honor to share this story with you. This year has been a doozy, but the SanSan fandom is a blessing and you all have been the bright spot in this hell year!
> 
> This won’t be the last of me in the SanSan fandom. I’ve got another multi-chapter fic in the works to start publishing in the very near future. You can also catch up with me on tumblr at supernovadragoncat.tumblr.com! 
> 
> Thank you for having me and many blessings to you all! Much love to everyone and please stay safe out there! 💚

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! See you on Tuesdays for the updates! Much love to you all!
> 
> [ Check out the Tuesday's Gone playlist on Spotify!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3LI17rqYmJMQTO5MonbJvp?si=4qbYFC5WQeaV99GwN5jfvw)


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